I will be trying this myself and reporting back but what a great post!
Mad for Marmalade – Seville Orange Marmalade
Mad for Marmalade event inspired me to do one more marmalade canning session, leading to six a half pints.. I wanted to make one pure traditional marmalade with Seville oranges and they were finally! in stock at Farmboy in the city and so hubby brought a bag full home.
Man, these oranges have one of the thickest rinds, and so I cleaned, cut and soaked for the full day to help soften them, and then I pre-cooked them in their water.. and I still was not happy with how firm they were.. so I hit them with a stick blender.. yes, it gives a different look then the slices but I wanted them in smaller bits.
Then I let it cool enough to handle, measured it out and went with a 1-1-1 recipe, 1 part of the orange mixed, 1 part water and 1 part sugar, boil till 220 and confirmed with a wrinkle test on a plate.
They cooked perfectly and they set up like a dream.. so much pectin them but this is one bitter marmalade.. hubby loves it, me not so much.. I love the blood orange and the kumquat are outstanding!
The Blood Orange for me was the perfect blend of orange, sweetness with that lovely under bite.. if you find the Saville to be too much, that would be what I recommend to make.
Jan-Garden Overview
Hello Folks, I am going to do my best heading into 2017 to have a big old tracking year, I need to do this and I have the book, the paperwork and the plan.. I will make it happen..
Jan Costs
Output Costs: 86.60
Seed Potato’s $56 Dollars
TSP Potato Seeds -$8 Dollars
4 trays with bottoms (will need to recycle tops – 5 each total 20 plus tax 2.60
I was not planning on buying these at all, but I had never seen them, they are built to fit the flat trays for seed starting but they are big enough to replace a standard three times seed replant for peppers an tomato early starts, each tray hold 21 plants, but my bigger shelf with enough height an depth will only hold two until they could be moved in and out. we will see if this was a sound investment or not.
Jan imputes: Sprouts -2 trays per day.. organic mixed sprouts each tray is slightly bigger then the tray at the store at 3.99 each.. so that’s 8 dollars per day in sprouts
Total produced : $248
Jan $ 161. 40 on the positive side
Well, that’s a easy month.. I assure you it will not be near as easy in the coming months, I plan to write it out daily, otherwise, I know that I will get behind.. The winter supply of sprouting seeds was gotten in fall of 2016 and cost a total of 40 with shipping included in that. Some sprouts are also from my own home saved radish seeds or other saved seeds.
Canada 150 Food Blog Challange “Char Patties”
The Jan topic is fish and seafood, and my mind jumped to my time living in Iqaluit, Nunavut and being able to buy locally caught Char along with many other kinds of freshly caught seafood and wild game at the local hunters store.
Inuk drying char the traditional way
(I found this awesome photo from ronwassink blog, sadly no link working)
I knew the spot as soon as I saw the photo, I have hiked down to that area many times with my husband and my hounds.
We were there for five years and I bought a goodly amount of Char over those years, Char to my taste buds is northern Salmon. The time of year can effect the color of the flesh which can be a lighter to darker pink to an almost deep red color. Its flesh to me is a touch softer than B.C. Salmon. Strangely on the flip side, I find the dried and smoked Char to be firmer and of a stronger flavour then B.C. Wild caught dried and smoked..
They can be quite big fish and I was able to buy them whole or cleaned, or if you want to spend the money all freeze wrapped in portions. ( I never bought them in portions or pre-seasoned or such while I lived up there) I bought them whole, ideally gutted if I was lucky. But since moving down south to the Ottawa area, I have been lucky enough to have the portioned ones come down with friends. Below is one of my favorite ways to serve it.
Smoked Pan Fried Char on a bed of cabbage and mushrooms
In town, we did fish fry and bake as well as dried and smoked but I had to pick a recipe for this post. This proved more difficult for me then I thought it would.. I wanted to do some research and make sure that the recipes and ways I was taught by the local ladies I befriended while I lived there were a good reflection of the norm.
As I read recipes on the net, I started to laugh.. and I know that it’s not nice to say this but many of those recipes did not come from the north, I know this because when they start writing about using fresh peppers, onions and top with chopped with fresh green onion or chives.. then I truly started to giggle.
The food costs in the north and the distant that food is flown in.. no one I knew made dishes with the type or style of fresh food that I was reading, One winter I was wanting to make a stir-fry, I had my meat and my dried and then soaked foods ready and I send my hubby to the North Store for a green pepper, I wanted one fresh pepper in this otherwise, local meat, dried food stir-fry to be put over baked rice. He came home with a good sizes purple onion? I was like.. really they didn’t have a single pepper in the store.. o they did.. but that single pepper was 18 dollars and my hubby was not willing to spend that, he bought me the 8 dollar single purple onion.
So I am going to share with you a recipe that was taught to me from a lovely 20 something born and raised Inuit who lived a few doors down from us. This dish was a great way to use up the scraps that would be left over from the bigger dishes and or if you were preserving the larger pieces.
Char Patties to be served with Bannock
- One large portion of Char skinned and deboned (2 cups approx.)
- 1 cup of instant Potato flakes (add half water to rehydrated them)
- Salt, Pepper to taste
- Lard for the pan
- Flour with salt-pepper-dried garlic powder
Boil your kettle and pour your boiling water over your instant dried potato flakes in a bowl, put a lid on the bowl and leave it.
Take your trimmings, de-bone them, de-skin them and then finely dice them, measure them out.. you want a 3 parts fish to 1 part potato. lots of salt and black pepper or to taste
Open your bowl of now room temp and mix your potato’s up, it should be quite stiff, put your pre-seasoned fish into the bowl and mix well. Take out large spoons worth of the mixture, Roll them in flour and lower them gently into the hot lard in a good fry pan. Gently flatten them a touch
Do not touch them for at least a min or two till you can see golden brown edges, the patty when nudged should move, if it does not, let it cook a bit longer, flip only once, after flipping, press a touch to flatten and allow to cook another 2 or 3 min till golden brown.
Move to a plate to drain (the normal thing to say is paper towel but they are hard to come by in the north, so in true fashion, on a clean tea towel) Serve hot with fresh Bannock on the side. They are perfect to be placed in as a sandwich and eating in hand if you wish.
Day one of the Wind Block-Greenhouse build-homestead projects 2017-Jan
Had my heart sister come over today and with me playing the part of helper, gopher and her in lead, we went to work on a project.. its a mixed player..
This is what we got done for today.. two walls and the main roof tress. We are planning a rebuild and so it did not make sense to do a full porch but I am so tired of the drop in temp when the door opens onto the porch.
So this is a winter break, enclosed and its designed to be unscrewed from the house at the time of the rebuild and moved to the side of the little barn as a greenhouse, this is just the start and I will update the rest of the build in one or two more and show how its been finished.
Even this year, we will be putting a full top to bottom shelving unit to use the big wall as increased growing space for plant starting, and on really warm sunny days, I will even be able to open the door to use it to passive solar heat the house a touch.
Overdone.. Waste Not
This was the sauce.. half a cup of mustard, 1/4th cup of marmalade, 1 soy sauce, half a tsp of keen hot dry mustard and half a tsp of black pepper. So yummy.. it was put over a mix of older lamb cube stew meat with fresh onion, diced garlic.. all put into my good cast iron pot and into a slow over, this was to be served with a salad and mashed on side..
It will be made again, as the flavours melded very well.. BUT..
I left the house and asked hubby to check on it, I was late home, he was late coming in the house as he was outside working for an extra hour or more and it was burned. I mean burned to a black mess, that I had to scrape out, soak out and then do the baking soda boil twice to get it mostly clean.. my poor pot!
Now, thankfully I was able to throw together a quick supper thanks to my pantry and cellar, I just took a number of pre-cooked this and that, and made a broth with some fresh bits, cooked it and chopped some fresh greens in and voila.. supper..
that should have been the end of it but its been niggling at me.. worrying like a little worm in my head.. and I was not sure why.. took me awhile to figure it out.. its true that its very rare that anything is burnt in my house, I don’t go out that often, I could have put more liquid in the dish and it would not have happened.
But that is not what it was about.. it bothered me a pound of good quality lamb was wasted, that pound of meat if bought at the store is ten dollars a pound (if you bought it as whole lamb) buy it by the pound like that and it’s closer to 15 dollars locally.
Throw in how it was raised an its pretty much organic, local and grass-fed.. its my frugal side kicking in.. we eat well.. I mean we eat really well.. I will find a day to finish that month post on totals but if you had to buy the food that we raise on the farm, you would need to spend between 1400 to 1800 per month to do so.. or around 800 to 900 per person.
We don’t spend anywhere near that in raising, growing or harvesting our own food, in fact it costs us a fraction of that in direct funds.
Now don’t get me wrong, I can and do make very frugal meals in terms of costs, I can bring daily meal costs down to under a dollar but the farm and the land allows me to so much freedom and flexablity in this regards.
So I know that this seems so little in some way.. but I hope I am not the only one that feels this way.. Have you ever ruined a good meal or something that you have worked on, that has taken time to do and then not have it turn out?
I am mulling this one, still chewing on it in my head at times, I think it just that I hate waste.. that’s the bottom line for me.. it could not even more moved over to feed the critters. I wish I had taken a picture, but it never occurred to me that I should or that I would be writing about it LOL
Getting your hens to lay in the cold dark winter months
How do you get a steady supply of winter eggs on the homestead?
I have gotten a few questions from local newer folks that are asking, how do I get my hens to keep or start laying eggs. This is a slight rework of a post I put up before. It covers all the big main points for you..
Most folks talk about Light and how it effects laying and it does, and its important for sure.. Darker hens have more trouble with this then lighter hens typically, they need even more light.. but all chickens if left to natural lighting and the shorter daylight hours that come with winter in Canada are going to slow down and in some cases stop laying eggs.
Yes, you read that right.. STOP LAYING eggs.. and if you are on a true natural cycle, you will just let them do that, they provide a glut of eggs in the spring, lay though the summer and slow down in fall and then they will after the age of two or three move from taking a 2 to 4 week slow down to a 4 to 6 week stop and break all together, my oldest hen on the farm is coming 8, she earns her way not by the eggs she lays but because she is one of the best sitters and hatchers and momma hens on the farm.
So what can you do about it?
Light: Yup, just like everyone else, I am going to say if you want your girls to lay thought the winter, you need to add light, but do not be afraid to think outside the box.. some folks are very successful at moving their hens to their unheated greenhouses during the winter, this helps you get every light bit you can, and keeps the heating (if you choose to heat) to a min and has the added bonus of them both cleaning and adding to the soil. but I recommend that if you can, take your chicken light needs to solar, We have a solar powered light that collects during the day (when the birds have light) turns on in the evening as it gets dark and runs for about 4 to 5 hours on a winter charge, this is the best of three worlds, I use what natural light there is at all times, The light turns on by itself as it gets dark and the extra hours means that my birds get at least 12 hours of light even in the dark of winter and third, I am still on the same solar powered lights for the chickens and the big barn coming on 7 years, given that I got them on sale for 29.. that’s at power cost of 4 dollars per year to power a building.. if I was doing that at my local power costs.. it would be a lot more.
Protein: that simple word that is just not so simple in real life.. you can go buy layer feed, it will have lots of protein in it.. mostly from GMO soybeans but its there.. or if you have a few chickens, you can pay though the nose for organic.. good for you if you can do so.. but most of us are on a budget.. So we are using a basic grain feed that is going to be a mix between 9 to 13 percent protein, it will get your birds though the winter but it will not be great that’s for sure.. and those lower protein will effect your layers. So you can do a number of tricks, you can grow fodder, if you have a small flock, its quick and easy enough to do and it will increase the basic amounts to the need levels, you can hard boil and chop back a egg into the feed to increase the protein count, if you are doing small critter butchering on the farm in the winter ,like rabbits, you can give the leftover bits to the chickens and they will pick them clean, you can grow meal worms or red wiggers and once a week toss a handful to them, crickets are another choice I know that someone grows for her birds, I personally do fodder, meat scrapes and meal worms. In a total pinch, I know folks that just toss them a handful of the dried cat food to give them that boost.
Age: this is a great trick and when done correctly it works like a charm, keep the ages of your flock moving, if you have spring hatched hens that are young pullets that are coming into laying in the fall, early winter, they will start and as long as you meet their feed and protein needs they will continue to lay all winter, but be aware that they will take a spring break and first adult molt. but if you have older hens, they will have done a fall moult, a winter slow down and they will cover for your young girls in the spring..
One more reason to love ducks : LOL, no really, ducks are so good in so many ways, when the hens hit that hard winter slow down.. no I will not lay for you if they are older, the duck hens are out in crazy cold but sunny temps and she will start laying weeks before the chicken will stop looking out at the snow and giving you the eye, that says, make it stop and put another layer of fresh hay out there if you think, I am going to even think about going out of my hen house.
Farm Gal Tip of the Day – Give your girls hay once or twice a week, just a touch will do, they will use it like bedding but not before they find every bit of seed head, and good stuff in it. It will give you a bit of color in your winter eggs a well.. Do you not just love how eggs change all year long in color and texture a bit.. from pullet to spring, to summer to winter eggs, good cooks know that they are not the same 🙂
I have 5 new 2016 born pullets of coming up to layer age and this week has been exciting, so far three of those little girls have started laying.
Did you raise up new chicks this year, are you heading into winter with a young flock that will lay for you, or are you heading into winter with a older flock of hens that are going to slow down a lot. If so do consider putting up some extra eggs while you have them for both eating and baking..
Beat a dozen eggs together till lighter in color, add a tsp of sugar for ones that you want to bake with a tsp (or half a tsp but please do add some) salt and beat it in and then pour into ice cube trays, freeze them hard then pop out, one cube is one egg, double bag them into ziplock freezer bags (it must be double bagged) and it will keep for three months with ease. Just take as many cubes out that you want, put them in a covered bowl in the fridge and thaw them and use.
For regular storage of eggs, just remember if you washed it, fridge, or freezer storage as above, but if you its a clean egg with natural bloom on, you can store it at cooler room temp for weeks (and per my tests, more like months) without much issue.
Question from a reader: what about if the eggs get frozen? if you bring them in a solid state, you can thaw them in the fridge for a bit and then scramble them to be feed to your hounds, purrpots or back to the chickens once cooled down. What you can’t do is, let them thaw and then hold them for use, because once frozen, they are cracked in the shell, but you can not waste them.
When dealing with older eggs.. I highly recommend these two tests that go together..
a) float your eggs if you are suddenly using a bunch of them, or if you found a clutch in summer, that has a unknown age into a bowl or pot of water, if they sink, fresh, if they half float, older but still good typically, and if they float, they are bad..
2) always follow my grandmothers advice, never crack a egg into a dish, always crack each egg one at a time into a bowl and check it 🙂
Freezer Camp 2016
Well, 2016 is officially done and its the first time in all these years on the farm that I have done ALL! the butchering.
From wee quail to 600 plus pound pigs to everything in between, all done by myself.. and boy did I find my groove and did I find my limits on tools, skills and gear!
I did some work arounds.. if you can’t cut the bones, section off the leg and debone it, don’t have a big enough grinder.. chop the meat, can it and then pull it apart will work in different dishes.
The beef is getting lower and lower in the freezer and cellar jars.. its now on ration till I do Marty in the late spring-early summer and yes, I am planning on doing him myself..
I am going to rate myself on skill set, fowl butcher.. its all there.. small critter, rabbit and such, fast and clean.. I can do a lamb now fast and easy, same with a goat kid..
Small pigs.. yup.. but still need work on the big BIG pigs, they are a handful and then some.. I much prefer to do them in the 200 to 300 range..
Tools, what I am missing is a bone saw (man, that is one thing I really do want a power tool on) and a big grinder.. I have hand grinders and they do the job well, I even have a small grinder and its not bad but I have out-grown it for the volume needing to be done.
I have worked it out that I like the best cuts for curing, or for the freezer, the rest are canned for other uses. I need a better smoker..
Roughly between hauling costs, kill cost, cut, wrap and cure costs, and tax on top, doing everything butcher wise in 2016 saved us around 5 grand.. talk about paying yourself well for time invested.
And while the savings money wise are huge, the working of skills is worth even more to me.. This is a area that we will see more posts on in 2017..
The goal in 2017 is to all my own processing but to expand my skills, knowledge and ways of preparing cuts and curing an smoking, sausage making an so forth
Big Barn Prep-Lamb Watch 2017
The Big Barn is old, really old, its coming into it’s 90th year per the locals and its been repaired, its had add on’s done to it, and its also aging.. always aging, always being putter on, working on..
This is the main people size door to the front half of the Big Barn (or what would be called, the old barn” I love this door, its like stepping into a older time on the farm
The first thing that greets me is Bullwinkle.. as the hot line is off for the winter due to the heavy snow load, he decided that he could just hop, skip and jump the fence and meet me in the yard.. this will not do, so while he does get to have outside time in the corral, he has a big stall, its an nice loose stall but he is getting big enough now that he does wear a Cow Collar and when we do work in his stall, we call him over to his spot and he is clipped on the chain and he stands while we work around him and then we release him again once we are out.. (I learned my lesson well with Girl)
At one time this part of the barn was set up for cows and the big steel parts are there, but we took out the side metal poles and cut them down and ground them flat, so that its now two big stalls and one small sheep jug.. Bullwinkle is growing very well, he is already tall as the half way and his back is level with the metal bar. While I know its normal to use a tie stall for cattle, I just can’t do it, I feel that he needs to the freedom to move.
The big back double stall is Bojangles and he is still using it even with the gate open.. he self-stalls himself even if I don’t.. I had to laugh at it and groan as it adds to the cleanup load in the barn. Bojangles stall is kept cleaned regular, I don’t do deep pack with him, he likes to watch us clean the stalls, it amuses me, as he seems to think that he must be the judge..
But the main part of that pile, was in fact from a deep-pack pen, I love deep-pack pens, its so good for many reasons, it starts composting in place, creating a deep, softer pack for critters to lay on, as long as you keep adding to the top with clean bedding, its awesome.. the fact that it comes out well into its composting is great, if I had pig, they would have turned that even more for me.. what its not good for, is the heck of a work out you will get cleaning one out LOL
It took hubby and me a good while this afternoon to get it done, but it was a perfect day for it.. it felt very spring like.. Everyone was feeling it.. including the boy’s who were having a way to much fun goofing off in the pasture.. We finished with daylight to spare and a good sweat under our belts.
A perfectly cleaned and ready stall with fresh straw down just waiting for the first of the new lambs to come.. Carmel is the first one on my list to be due.. She could take upwards of at least another week but we have a big snow storm coming in and I find that often with rising or dropping pressure with storms, that we get new babies.. So we will see, which is why we did the push to get it ready today 🙂
The sheep were up on the slight rise, that was drained out well and gave them a nice drier spot to sit and chew their cuds.. The Nanny Goat will be moved from the little barn to the big barn very soon. She is due mid-feb and I need to start her routine for feeding and milking and I want to remove the buck from her area as I don’t want buck taint on the milk.
Lambing Season-Milking Season will on us very soon! I am excited to see it coming..
Posted in farm, homestead, sheep
Tagged barns, composting, deep pack method, farm, Farmgal, jugs, lambing, lambing prepwork, Mild snap in winter, old barns, sheep, working in barns
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Farm Puttering
A farmer friend said, you want some oats, I have to much for the bin, and so the extra are in the one ton bag and I said, I would be interested, I had gone off the farm and when I came back on a pallet was a ton of wheat.. we got it tarped and held our breath that it would stay dry for a day or two.. then we moved it by bucket ad filled up 5 plus 55 gallon drums in the little barn for proper storage an so we can give back the sack to the farmer..
The Rabbits are producing lots of poo for garden use and the piles are getting up there, I will have lots of work cleaning this out, the joy of rabbit is that its a cool poo that can be added directly in a light covering without first composting it.. the second reason I liked this photo is all the banged out circles from the frozen winter crocks..
The Roosters are enjoying the fresh air and sunshine, Big Red looks fierce and after his bad frostbite two years back o his comb, he healed so well an has never had a issue since.. big combs and very cold winters don’t mix well. The little Iceland rooster behind is sweet and soon I will move him an his hen to their own breeding pen for pure eggs.
The Sheep are making the best of the warmer but damp weather and are enjoying their outside time.. the damp is making their wool curl even more.. I adore this lamb, its a mini-me version of its father..
I made a promise to show more of the photo I take, I love this one because of his sweetness at gate begging and that adorable wet beard on him.. but normally I would not share as its got fence and rope etc.. instead I am just going to own it, the snow is so high that the fences are to low, the goats will just hope over, so they are in the big outdoor pen with hut behind the chain link and as they love to push on the gate, I have a dogs lead in place that winds though the top to give it extra strength.. it works and everyone is safe..
We had a broken open bale of straw and so it got moved to a tarp and the spring like weather for the past few days meant that the kittens- young farm cats were in fine form. Sofie is quite the hunting farm cat, she is a evening-bed kitten but each morning, she asks to go out and she will spend hours hunting the barns, buildings and so forth before coming to window and asking to come or running up to the door if it opens and come in, sometime with a present between her teeth.. but she is learning.. out.. out with it..
Her best kitty friend is Marble.. she is still the smallest of the kitten pride of 2016, but her colors are showing much more, she likes all the perks of being a indoor-outdoor farm cat but she does not give up the love or purrs for the people much, she is sweet enough around us but she is “the farm cat” so be it.. She had been held off to get a touch bigger but she will go for her spay within the next month and then Sophie after that.
I am so glad that all the boy kittens and the older bigger female kittens are fixed already, the single intact male tom that hanging around the farm is starting spring marking, but my altered boys are sweet and clean. One more kitty to live trap and get snipped.. I can’t stop the boys from other farmers stopping by on walk about but I can do something about them being intact.
The irony of the warmer spring-ish melt is that its clear I need to grab the big bucket and the scooper and spend some time doing horse poo pickup, because that is one that does need to be moved over and composted down.. the second thing it does is give me the urge to make some homemade paper..
I have shown you how to do it with cow and sheep, I think I should make Caleb and Bo paper this winter before it gets crazy busy..
Posted in homestead
Tagged billy goat beards, Chickens, farm cats, Grain, homestead mutterimgs, manure, rabbit poo compost, roosters, sheep
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Just another Day on the Farm 