Chick Update..

So far my four wee tikes are growing very well, I am watching them feather out and get more of their colorings and patterns in.. the tail feathers are being watched closely as is the wattles..

DSCN5100 This is the oldest chick, its a full week older then the other three.

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This is the plain black chick with a bit of white on both fronts of the wings so far.. but check out that top wattle growth on it!

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This is the next biggest of the three chicks, and the most friendly of them all.. Its nickname is chipmonk for the eye stripe

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DSCN5115Last but not least is the one I had hoped would be a blue, but its not.. its a dilute yes but blue, nope.. but its a strong flyer already

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Anyone want to take a guess on sexes yet.. LOL.. I think I have three of one sex (maybe) and one of one sex.. but I just do not know this breed well enough yet..

 

 

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March Photo Challenge -20th

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Yup, I went to a red head this time..

 

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March 20th- The Canadian Wartime Recipe Challenge 2015

Can you believe it, its Friday again.. and that means Fish!

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Oyster Pie

40 Oysters, 2 hard cooked eggs, pinch of salt, tsp of parsley, tsp of chopped onion, 2 cups of oyster liquor and water, 3 tsp of flour and 2 tbsp. of oil. Heat the oysters in their canned liquor, strain, arrange them, mix the rest and pour over top, make a Baking Powder biscuit Crust and bake till done..

This one is interesting, I would be willing to try a small version of it to see what it turned out like, but I know hubby would not be eating it.

Crab Souffle

2 tbsp. of fat, 2 tbsp. of milk, 1 cup of crab meat, 2 yolks, 3 tbsp. of flour, pinch of salt, pinch of pepper and 2 egg whites.

Mix the sauce, add fish and eggs, bake 25 min..  boy there for thin on directions.. yikes..

Creamed Fish

2 tbsp. of oil, pinch of salt, 1 cup of flaked canned fish, 2 tbsp. of flour, 1 cup of milk, pepper to taste..

Make your cream sauce, add the fish and bake in oven till top is golden brown.

As you can tell they loved their sauces..

If I was going to make the oyster pie, I think I like the idea I found on the net (not my photo) of a shepards oyster pie.. it looks good to me..

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March 19th- The Canadian Wartime Recipe Challenge 2015

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Their Hedge Row Picking would be our foraging and it was allowed with rules in place for those that could get out to their local farmers area but I imagine that the farmers used a fair amount of it themselves. They used them like we would use Spinach today..

Still, I was always very interested to know the many uses they used nettles, I will be giving nettles recipes, but in my book from England on the nettles comes this great story about the fact that in the dark of night, they went out and cut many nettles and dried them for dying purposes for the uniforms.

during World War I, the blockaded German Army of necessity reverted to nettles due to the shortage of cotton; it is reported that fully 85 percent of captured German uniforms were made from nettle. Once the nettle fabric is made, it can be dyed green with nettle, which has almost 5 milligrams of chlorophyll in every gram, one of the highest percentages in nature. During World War II, the British requisitioned 100 tons of nettles to make green dye for camouflage.

But lets go back to a great hedgerow green that is so healthy for those that are eating and drinking it..

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I promised that I would also show a cooked, so I took half the plate, ran a knife over them a bit cutting the biggest leaves, put a bit of butter in the bottom of a pan, threw the nettles in and let them cook till dark dark green and well wilted, if you cook mustard greens or big older spinach leaves, you want a full wilt on these greens.. then I added in a cup of lovely pork bone broth, simmered till hot, added a tsp of sour cream and that was a light wonderful tasty soup! If you needed it to be more filling, bread on the side would do the trick as it was I had it for breakfast that day.

 

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March 18th- The Canadian Wartime Recipe Challenge 2015

As I had a new litter of wee buns in the hutch, talking about rabbits seems like a great idea.

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http://www.1900s.org.uk/1940s50s-livestock.htm

Why keeping rabbits was so worthwhile

Rabbits are very good at reproduction all the year round. so those families that kept rabbits had a never ending supply of rabbit and chips, stewed rabbit and rabbit pie. Rabbits were killed for eating whenever there were more rabbits than cages.

How to prepare a rabbit for cooking

To dispatch a rabbit, you suspended it by its back legs with the left hand with its back towards you. Then with your open right hand you struck it across the back of its neck with a swift chopping motion. The rabbit was then disembowelled and a stick of wood was placed in the cut to keep the cavity wide open. The following day the skin was removed.

The value of a rabbit’s skin in war-time

The skin was worth money from the rag and bone man who sold it on for winter boots and clothing. First, though, it had to be dried. My father stretched it tightly across a board, nailed it to the board and rubbed in salt. When the skin was dry, it was as stiff as the board, but was softened up by rubbing it together and pulling it over your knees.

(Mole skins could be dried in the same way. My first mole trap cost 2/6 [half a crown] from Woolworths but it soon paid for itself as we got 6d per skin. The skin was parcelled up and posted to an address in the Exchange and Mart. Mole skins were needed by plumbers for wiping lead joints, and were used for the purpose ever since Roman times. Moles were bred on an industrial scale wherever the Romans took their civilization. Nowadays pipes are copper and plastic rather than lead.)

Peter Johnson

Ps,  I would not recommend the 24 aging in skin but we are talking about England where they loved to hang fowl till it aged and you knew it was ready when the weight of the body could tear off the head, trust me that would take days..

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Rabbit Pot Pie..

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Filling

2 large rabbit hind legs with thighs, baked and meat pulled and diced, or two rabbits front legs, or the whole front of the rabbit baked off and meat pulled, in England, they tended to bake them bone in, but most folks now would debone

A onion peeled and diced

half a cup of any color root veggies you could get your hands on

one cup of cooked diced potato’s can be added if you want a bit more filling pie..

Salt, pepper, with some chopped greens in it, at the time it would have been parsley, but nettles or any other hedgerow greens would work just as well.

Well, most of us would eat our stews as just that back in the day, it was very often wrapped up into dough, it added filling but it also when made the right way was easy to grab, pack and eat as a closed sandwich.

 

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March Photo Challenge 2015- 19th

White Rum is now one month old and yes, he really is about a 3rd of the size of his mother, its not just his fluffy coat, he is just a huge boy and as a single lamb, he is on a nice milky momma sheep and he gets it all.

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Brandy is also enjoying the sun and having a nap..

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Waiting, Waiting, in the jug, nothing to do but eat, drink, chew cud,  rest and wait..  I say, she is having twins and I think twin woollies.. look at the size of that belly! They are starting to shed their under wool coat in tuffs now.. It always amazes me that they are hair sheep in the heat, grow in a wool undercoat and then shed it naturally each spring, the local birds love it to make nests with.

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March Photo Challenge -18th

 

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My Sweet Girl Bubbles, had a lovely set of twins waiting for us this morning in the barn, one wooly and one hair in type both ewes, she says, she got this.. they are doing so well but its very cold

DSCN5082so for the little hair lamb who is about a 3rds smaller then her big boned, tall and all legs Wooly sister got her little wee lamb jacket. She is so pretty, four white socks, a big old white tail tip, white blaze on her face and some white hip coloring..

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Both of them are strong, up and active in their nursing.. I will be tracking this wool cross female as closely as I have been the boy, nicknamed White Rum aka Rum.

 

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March Photo Challenge -17th

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Garden Plans for 2015- Vegetable Marrow

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These can also be much more yellow.. The strain of them that I have is  a Truly old Fashioned Veggie, that is not often grown anymore, other summer squash have become more popular and common. This one tracks back to 1824 , its right around a foot long in a oblong shape. It has a delightful light mellow and buttery flavour when used most do. Its grown as all squashes are ideally in hills, its a hard bush plant, very productive and its a short season squash at 50 days.

This is the squash of my grandmother that was used for making her Mock Pinnapple

This is one of the few Summer Squashes that can hold up to canning with a lovely firmness and that to me at least puts it into a class of its own..

Marrow is particularly important in the diets of certain cultural groups because it provides a high level of nutrients in a low-calorie vegetable. It is a significant source of vitamin A, vitamin C, dietary fiber, calcium, and iron.

This veggies is a good easy choice for seed saving, but it must be done by either hand crossing and then tapping to present cross breeding and or with a breeding cage placed over it.

The interesting part this year will be to figure out where to plant it.. Last year my side squash planting hills were a bust, so while I might be willing to do one hill there to see how it goes this year, I am certainly not willing to put my bigger hopes there.. but my biggest area is going to the butternut landrace growout

and the big squash area in the main garden is going to my new funky Italian hanging summer-winter keeping squash, more on that later..

Which leaves me doing the huh!

Three choices remain

1) make new hills and plant them in a new spot in the yard..

2) Make a new hugelculture and plant them in that.. My big one is on melon duty this year and my smaller ones are booked for other plants.

3) Consider interplanting them with Corn in a area that is already booked, and throw in a few beans and make that whole area a three sister garden..  hmmmm.. we will see what I decide in the end..

I am going to be starting two plants very soon, this week most likely, so that I can transplant and have fresh eating squash in the greenhouse and then into the garden for the end of may..

At 50 days, I will hold off till the end of march to start them..

 

 

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March 17th- The Canadian Wartime Recipe Challenge 2015

Happy St. Paddies Day!

Is it any wonder that I am going to post a Irish Stew Recipe from the wartime.

One pound Mutton, wipe and cut and cover with cold water (remember that back in the day, the meat would have come with much less prep work done then we would expect our meat to have done), The fat on the meat would have been saved and rendered

Cook the mutton for one hour add one fourth cup of carrot, turnip an onion and one cup potato, cook for half a hour, salt to taste and added dumplings, After cooking them 10 to 12 min serve..

A pretty basic and plain lamb stew! but in keeping with the day..

Here is a Farmgal Lamb Stew-Soup, I went though my recipes pretty carefully on this, and made sure that I found one that would be with things that would have been growing even in winter time in England.

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Dark Day One Pot Lamb Soup in Broth

1 tsp duck fat (can use whatever oil or fat you want to start your dish)
One Large Onion
6 Large Mushrooms-Diced
2 cups of chopped greens (a mix of spinach, kale, horseradish and Beet Greens, frozen for winter use)
1 tsp of minced garlic
1 tbsp of green onions and leeks (white and green parts), I used a cube of each frozen in water
2 Large Carrots-Peeled and sliced
3 Med Potato’s -Peeled and diced
1 pds of small diced lamb stew meat*
Salt, pepper, Keens Mustard, Turmic, Basil and Ginger to taste
1 quart lamb bone stock, with 1 quart water (this was a very light broth, if you want darker/heavier use a second quart of lamb stock or veggie stock to go with)

I cooked the onions, mushrooms and lamb till onion clear, and meat browned, then I added in the rest and simmered for around 40 to 50 min at a low-med heat, till the veggies were tender and done. Simple, easy and all done in one pot, a good hearty but very healthy winter soup..

* This was young tender spring grass-fed lamb, Its worth noting that this meat was from when I butchered out lamb legs, and that I had made sure to remove all silver skin from the peices(which can make them tough, and is often left on by butchers) as well as cutting off all extra fat bits, which I used to render into tallow, and I cut the peices into about 1/3 of the size typically seen in a store if you are buying beef stew meat.. this means that the meat peices were right around equal to the size of the carrot and potato peices.

If you are using older mutton or yearly lamb, or from the butcher lamb stew meat, I would recommend simmering for about another hour or so, till the meat is tender.

 

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