Just another Day on the Farm

Sprouting and in house fodder use.

Posted on January 12, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

At the moment, the sprouting going on in the house go for us (the humans), Puddin and the quail..

I have larger fodder trays and buckets for the birds outside but none the less, for Christmas I got to move from my jars which I have used very successfully for nine years 🙂 (cheap and reusing what I already have) to formal Sprouting trays, and while I do like what I have getting so for, I am still on a learning curve with them.

Each set is of four trays.. with a bottom drip tray.. I am finding that they need a bit of fiddle work for some of my bigger seeds and I need to move the barley seeds from the dip holes on the sides to get proper drainage.

Still at day five that is some very impressive growth, and I think despite what the book said, that I in fact need to use fewer seeds as they should not be quite this root bound on day 5

Still the Little critters in the house are loving it, while there is always “feed pellet out” and they nibble their hay, they do the dance when they see this coming.. and not a bit is wasted.. It’s funny to see them pull out one and then run away with it, likes it’s the best worm, treat ever!

Puddin just grabs a quarter and pulls it into her girl cave. right now I have radish, pea’s and mustard seeds all sprouting and of course barley! I got a wire stand this year so that when the trays need to go single file, I can spread them out and not worry about water pudding on the shelf.. a single catch tray before gets the job done just fine..

What about you, do you sprout in the winter time? If so, what are you doing, for yourself or for the critters or for both.. do you do it small-scale or does it take up a goodly space in winter time..

Seeds order to date 2016 – Updated Version

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

Well, I think I am pretty much done shopping for new seeds, I will be attending a local to me seed swap, so that might bring more few but more likely I will be after locally produced seed for things for my land race programs mainly.

soy bean- Envy
bush bean- Orca
Bean-Tongue of Fire
Pole Bean-northeaster
Winter Sqaush -Lady Godiva
-Black Futsu
-Delicata .
-Nutter Butter
-Waltham Butternut
Fortin’s Family Bean
Canada Crookneck Squash
Canadian Wonder Bean
Speckled Cranberry Pole Bean
Thibodeau du Comte Beauce Bean
Blue Jay Bean
Vegetable Spaghetti
Arikara Yellow Bean
Rattlesnake Snap Bean
Waltham Butternut Winter Squash
Musquee de Provence Winter Squash
Galeux d’Eysines Pumpkin
Oka Melon (Oka (Bizard Island Strain)
Beets- Macgregor favorite X3
Collective Farm Woman Melon X2
Des Vertus Marteau Turnip
white Wonder Cucumber
all Seasons Cabbage
Chantenay Red Cored Carrot
Cucumber National Pickling
Yellow Solar Carrot
Ladies Slipper Achocha X2
Crosby’s egyptain Beet
Red Wethersfield Onion
Giant Musselburgh leek
British Wonder Pea
Blue Podded Pea
Golden Sweet Pea
black Russian Broad Bean
Ladies Spraybush Broad Bean
Flagg Bean
Sadies Horse Bean
Grandma’s Nellie Mushroom Bean
Iroquois Bean
Speckled Algonquin bean
Doloff Bean
Canadian Wonder Bean
Jesse Fisk Bean
Anne Jackson Pole Bean
Arkikara Yellow Bean
Jumo Roma Bean
Superlative Bean
Good Mother Stallard Pole Bean
yokohama Sqaush
North Georgia Candy Roaster Squash
Sweet Meat Squash
Algonquin Pumpkin
Norie Des Carmes Melon
Longfellow Cucumber
There are more but she sent them in French so I am unsure about writing out the French name.. I will be featuring some of them in English.. but this is a rock solid overview.

Herbs, (you are most likely thinking that is not a lot but I have most of my regulars at this point and either then come back each year, self-seed or I have my own collected seed)

Indigo
Sweet Marjoram
Lady’s Bedstraw
White Borage

Fodder ( again, I have most of these already but I like to bring in new genes to the pool while I can..

Mammoth Red Mangel
Yellow Mangel
Ground Breaker Raddish

Some of these are new but many are not, about a quarter are very old Canadian based seeds tracking their roots to the local native tribes, the other quarter are very short season, expanding my home seed collections both for those times of shorter summers and also for rotational planting

The other half mostly are to match saved seeds I already have but in to small of a gene pool, in some cases, I have ordered upwards of the same thing three times over from different growers across Canada, east coast, middle and west coast and I will interplant and work on a “same seed” mini landrace program..

Some are new to me, and are really pushing my zone’s ability to grow them, so we will see..

So, I am going to follow a girlfriends lead from last year and I am going to have a free for all on using up old seed this year.. somethings hold for years, and that is fine but others are getting old and I will use them all this year as extras..not things to count on..

As crazy as it sounds, I will be starting seeds in about four weeks for a few things.. only 73 days till spring 🙂

Posted in gardening | Tagged Seed orders for 2016 | 6 Comments

Deviled Eggs Recipe

Posted on January 10, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

This weekend has been very busy, leading me to do things that are fast an easy..

What can be easier than a quick tasty snack, with the hens all starting to lay now, its easy to keep a bowl of hard-boiled eggs in the fridge.

A bit of Salt, pepper, mayo and lovely dill is all that is needed to combine with the yolk, be mashed together, and put it back into the whites shell. The joy is that the eggs have enough yolk that with a bit of mayo to soften, blended till creamy to refill the centers.

6 hard-boiled eggs, (older eggs are best for peeling for fresher eggs, steam them, do not boil)
2 tbsp. of your personal favorite mayo dressing
pinch of your best salt, a pinch of your best white pepper, a pinch of good quality paprika, give them a good shake of the freshest dill you can get

if you want them more pretty, put mix in a piping bag and fill them that way, as this is just us, and a snack, I filled them back with the spoon

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged Basic Devilved Eggs | 6 Comments

Creamed Cabbage Stirfry Recipe

Posted on January 9, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

Creamed Cabbage Stirfry – This was a good portion for our two person household, I recommend doubling this for a four person dish.

Half a pound of finely sliced beef steak or cubes
1 Large Onion-Peeled and diced
2 or 3 stalks of celery
6 to 8 med to large mushrooms
1/2 cup of chopped red pepper
3 cups of coarsely chopped Cabbage
Salt, pepper, seasoning mix,
1/4th cup of yellow mustard
1 tsp of yellow mustard seeds (your choice on adding this or not)
1/4th cup of mayo or sour cream (please try the mayo, if you do not use the mayo, increase the seasoning and add 1 tsp of lemon juice to the dish)
Fat to start the dish

Put your fat in to heat, then cook your onions till clear, add in your meat and brown, then add in the mushrooms/celery and red pepper till the celery is just starting to soften, add in your seasonings and cabbage and give it a fry till it’s just starting to be cooked.. Add your mustard-Mayo dressing, stir and serve..

This dressing for dish goes to Farmer T, as she is the one who introduced me to it, its a fast easy way to dress a stirfry, its a light but flavourful dressing.

Ps, as my camera did not take a good photo of this dish, I am using a photo of a dish that is very close that I did have a photo off.. You should expect this dish to appear a touch more yellow on the dressing. I am sorry my photos did not turn out.. I did not want to make the dish twice in a row 🙂

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged creamed cabbage stirfry | 7 Comments

A Winter Morning..

Posted on January 8, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

Well, I let the hounds out that bounded with energy, I was in my huge warm flannel gown wrapped in my homemade blanket shrug with my amazing hot socks..

Farmgal Tip of the Day, Marks Work Wear House T-Hot Sock are the best! I love these thick, heavy and so warm socks, I have tried wool ones, hand knitted and so forth, I like the homemade ones, but for farm work, and for warmth, I have a week supply (ok more then a weeks) of hot socks, Like all socks, if you have worked hard enough to sweat in them, when you get in the house change into a dry pair.

I have made my hubby sick, sorry to my big guy, he almost never gets sick but when it hits, he is down and out, so I started morning chores, no one was really hungry, no knickers, no baaaing, the goats refused to get out of their warm bed etc. They let me get lots done before strolling up for their morning feeding.

So I checked feeders, checked water (I love that we have a water tank heater, makes such a difference to know that the pasture critters all have ice free water, the two horses drink enough that with the sheep, and goats that we needed to move from our warm from the house water x times a day to being able to keep the tough filled.. we still haul to the barn, and when they start lambing, it will add much more to the work load

The morning started out very pretty indeed and lighted up into this amazing frost and snow filled world.. I will enjoy it while I can, as they say, freezing rain is on its way.

Posted in Life moves on daily | 3 Comments

Kombucha – Starting over..

Posted on January 7, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

I am honestly not sure what happened, I got my first Komucha’s and I did really well with them, they grew, they made babies, I drank the F1’s, love it and all was trucking along..

I got a hotel made and had big strong ones going.. I mean, for those that make komucha’s, you know just how lovely this girl was..

And then last fall, I went away for six weeks and when I came home, both my hotel and my second baby had mold on them.. and if you have mold on them.. it was not a little bit..it was hello.. we are growing and everything was effected..

I sighed and threw them out and scrubbed the jars and thought, I will get a new one soon..

Well my soon turned out to be much longer then I expected.. weeks turned into months.. but finally a new small but stout young lady arrived on the farm.. she came fast and sassy but with very little tea (she has eaten it up) and I made my tea and put her in and set her into her spot and crossed my fingers.. she took her time getting going, she always looked good but did not see much signs of a baby, so I made myself walk away for a few days and voila..

Look at that healthy, growing and doing well baby growing on top today when I checked, I will let it get big enough that in another few days I will move the mother to a gallon jar and the baby to a half-gallon and soon enough I will be back into production. I am craving it as a drink in this winter time..

I am also craving fermented foods and sprouts, so I know that its my body wanting some extra vit-minerals.

Folks seem to either really like it or they don’t.. I do not care for the store bought at all, I do not like the fizzy to date but I thought maybe just maybe, I will try a few new flavours and see if I can find something I do like that way. How about you? Yes or no?

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged Growing kombucha, kombucha, kombucha in winter, Kombucha tea | 10 Comments

Frittata with Potato crust recipe

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

The eggs are still coming in now!

Frittata with Potato crust

One large Potato-Peeled and Sliced very fine
2 Large Duck eggs or 3 chicken
1 tsp milk
1 tsp Diced Onion
1 tsp Diced Mushroom or peppers or bacon etc
Salt/Pepper
Touch of grated cheese

You can use either a small cast Iron Frying Pan or a glass dish, grease your pan, I used my homemade Lard, then layer your finely sliced potatos as the crust on the side and bottom.

Then mix your eggs, milk, onion and one extra, pour into your potato crust and into a very hot oven at 400 and cook till the the middle comes clean with a knife, let cool for just a min or two, and then run a metal pie lifter to run around the outside and down the potato crust and either cut into portions or if using a small cast iron, just lift out and serve, which is what I did in the photo above

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged Frittata with Potato crust | 8 Comments

Bavarian Sourdough Starter

Posted on January 5, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

Its Here!!

The Bavarian Sourdough Starter, I ordered it from ebay, see the information supplied below and it arrived in the mail.. I will get busy getting that baby started and growing, I am excited for when I will post my first bread from it, he has a number of starters available.. and I plan on making my own grape starter again, so I might mix it up between this new starter and few others to see which one I like best.

One of the things that impressed me was the rise on this one compared to my self- grape caught one, it has a nice sour dough flavour to it, but it does have a good or great rise, its just ok.. This one is to have a very nice rise to it even when used with some of the darker and heavier flours.

It took a little longer to get here but that is normal where I live, the mail never comes as fast as other think it should.. but he (the seller) had good follow thought, I got my email with recipes and information from him in a timely manner.. So if the starter is as good as the service, I will be a happy farmgal

I am working towards moving away from the commercial yeast.. As in all available commercial yeasts are now the same single yeast strain.. Not that it does not do a great job raising your bread but just as I would never put all my eggs in one basket and only plant one type of corn, or flower or have only one source of meat on the farm, it does not seem like a great idea to only have one source of good quality yeast on the farm.

I supply independent bakeries with a variety of historic sourdough starters, many of which are available nowhere else. I do not advertise and have grown my business strictly through word-of-mouth and in having a reputation of offering only the best sourdough starters in the industry. I also maintain a repository for rare and historic cultures that are being preserved for future generations. These historic cultures are now available to the general public.

I believe this culture to be one of the finest European starters available. It makes the wonderful bread that has become associated with the southern part of Germany. And, as one would expect, it comes with quite an interesting and rich history as well. Oral history indicates that this starter dates back to around the period of Germany’s Black Death (1633) and originated in or near the town of Oberammergau. It literally took me years to track down a reliable German culture from this time period

This is the only historic German starter I’ve been able to locate that has been passed down through one single family for almost 400 years. The bread it leavens is absolutely fabulous. Having been born and raised in Bavaria (not far from Oberammergau), I remember this as the bread I ate as a young child in the 1950’s. How fortunate I was in having found it. It is one of my favorite starters and now I share it with you.

you will be emailed several PDF files which include the history of your starter, recipes and a handbook/guide, all totaling over 20 pages. My sincere best wishes to you in your quest for the perfect sourdough. Thank you for looking and happy baking!

check him out on Ebay! if you want to order some for yourself

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged sour dough bread, Sour Dough yeast | 3 Comments

Saving Money

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

Cecilia over at Kitchen Garden posted about saving money on the farm today, and its been rolling around my head since I read it, she is of course totally right, when I save by doing on the farm, that money is kept in the main account, and finds its way to being spent..

There is two interesting points to this.

I do bypass this in one way already, I have auto draws for RRSP, Tax Free Savings accounts and Savings Acounts, so I am saving in the sense of the money I save on the farm is part of the reason, that we can take those off each paycheck right off the top.

But I also use this a different way.. often I will set short term goals, example, tighten the belt for a month to NOT spend a extra hundred to couple hundred over a month in order to buy a larger ticket item, so again, to a point I am doing what she said, by not spending, that cash is there for the item that we plan on getting..

However, I am interested in the idea of could we find a way to put “something” that the farm saves for this coming year towards a goal in mind..

The question is what, and to be honest.. I am just not sure.. Part of me want to track things and figure out the savings for garden-food.. but that means I will need to have a tracking year two years in a row.. I was looking forward to tracking a few things this year, otherwise having freedom from scales..

However as the garden is fact the biggest planned money saver for the year, which means its the clear winner, but if you are talking about food as in groceries, then I need to expand the data.. it means that I need to include things like eggs, milk, cheese and meat.. Which makes this a pretty darn big project indeed.

It also means I have to take the time at least once a month and figure out what the costs of the food are, and not as my hubby likes to do.. when he wants to count the cheapest in food price he can get..

Example, he will look at the cheapest med eggs in the store. 2.39 and use it, but you and I both know that most of my eggs are a) large or extra large or jumbo, and two, they are free range, as close to organic as I can get them.. which is more like the 4.99 at farm boy eggs 🙂

(on a side note, it might be interesting to my readers from all over N.A. and the world to get a true look at local to Ottawa, Ontario food prices to compare to their own)

While in the flush of winter, it seems like a great idea, come july or sept, when I at times feel I barely have time to turn around.. it will not! Also I do count on those savings for use on the farm running costs. so I would need to figure out not only the savings but what percent I would want to put away for the big ticket item.. (the item can be figured out at a later point).. I think it a good idea, I just need to figure out how to either do a lot of the work now in winter or to make it streamlined for when times get busy..

Watch for more on this coming soon.. Thoughts? What percent do you think should be saved? Should it be a monthly report? or quarterly?

http://thekitchensgarden.com/2016/01/04/save-the-money/

To see the whole post, see the link below, i have taken out that part I want to talk about..

I have always said that farming does not make a lot of money but it does SAVE money. If you seed save and make your own compost vegetables cost almost nothing to grow. Processing is the biggest cost for Grass fed beef and pork raised on vegetables, milk and eggs come in way below anything you can buy at the supermarket. (Chickens are more expensive though). If I have bred and raised the animals myself – I am saving even more off the food bill. Milk and butter and cheese …are literally a bonus after feeding the animal on grass. My grocery bill can be really small. So I really do save the household budget a significant amount of money.

But unless I actually SAVE the money I am saving then it is not saving at all is it!

Once the equation has worn itself out there will be a number of dollars left over, these dollars need to be taken out of my household account and deposited into the farm account. Literally. Letting them just slide out the door on the backs of other expenses is not saving at all. Do you see?

I have skipped having my hair cut (and coloured but don’t tell anyone that I am not a natural blonde) so that money needs to be taken out and saved into the travel account too. Do you see what I mean?

Likewise quitting smoking or stopping drinking to save money. SAVE THE MONEY! If you get a raise – SAVE that money. Or if you give up Starbucks on the way to work or make your own lunch. Take it out of the household account and save it into your savings account.

Posted in Life moves on daily | 4 Comments

Snow, Sleds and Snow Shoes

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Just another day on the farm

Well, winter has finally arrived on the farm, and when it came, it came with direction and force.. we went from green, record breaking warmth.. to..

To snow..

Which means that there has been lots of shoveling, and it was time to break out the sled, switching from the wheel barrel to the sleds for moving things around, I highly recommend getting and having at least one extra sled on the farm at all times, its just a great idea.. I mean that wheel barrel is used lots and it can still be used in winter, its perfect for being placed in the walk ways if you are cleaning anything in barns and so forth but for movement outside, be it hay, water, feed or manure, the sled is your friend..

Having said that.. Farmgal tip of the day.. Different sleds for different uses, if you are going to haul five gallon water buckets with lids snapped on (trust me, get the lids, as every now and then, a spill will happen) then it only needs to hold four pails and it can be rounded, short and stout.. water pails do not do never as good with longer sleds.. for hay or feed, the longer sled is perfect, its lighter and can take those corners and turns better.. So having hauled water by hand for ten plus years in winter to the big barn.. heavy duty round and smaller for the water buckets, long and wide for the hay and feed bags..

Our old second hand snow shoes gave up the ghost on their ninth year of working on the farm.. (photo just to show example of them, not my photo)

so one of hubbies xmas presents was snazzy new modern light but tough snow shoes.. I am still on the hunt for some that can take my weight with gear.. I can find them that can take my own weight, if I was just wanting to go for a walk, but add in upwards of 50 more pounds worth of carry, tack and so forth and its getting harder to find.

Hubby did much better, even with us add the extra 50 pounds, we were able to find a great deal for him. I think a good pair of snow shoes on a northern homestead is a must have, we have had in a single night had drifts appear that are hip plus high, and there are times you just need to strap on the snow shoes, sled and walk your way over the drifts to make sure your hunkered down critters are well feed and watered.. while its always a good idea to have hay, and feed in each building, it sounds great but its just not as perfect as it sounds.

Sometimes, you store more of one thing then another in different buildings, so you will find yourself, having lots of hay but perhaps you need to haul straw, any way you cut it, when its that cold, I like to make sure they get warm water and when its bitter cold, warm mash for everyone..

I had a friend tell me all about her hip high struggle in snow while she tried to carry a bucket in each hand to give her the look.. she now has a sled and snow shoes 🙂

What is one of your must haves for winter, for some its the heat lamp, for some its the heated water buckets, your set up and how many critters you are caring for does make a difference to a point.