Just another Day on the Farm

Canning Day..

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

So far today, I have done, not all are in the picture, its just a sample of them..

This what happens when you want to clear out the freezer to make room in it, suddenly all the different bags of fruits you put away in the busy garden time of fall find their way to your stove and into yummy fruits and jams and compotes. The Pork is the huge legs that I put away, planning to get back to them and I am working my way though them, trimming, curing, grinding and canning as I go!

– 18 pints of pressure canned Raw Packed Pork.

-3 pints of Grape Juice

– 6 pints of strawberry rhubarb fruit

– 4 pints of raspberry Jam

-3 pints of Gooseberry Jam

-4 pints of blueberry fruit

My biggest crock pot of rendering lard, my biggest stock pot of pork bone broth simmering away with onion and garlic, two huge stock pots of elderberries for making Elderberry juice

Posted in Canning | Tagged Canning, Feb Canning Update 2014 | 1 Comment

Homemade Sheep Milk Tapicoa Pudding Recipe

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

I know that there are many good tapioca recipes on the net but not many of them use sheep milk and sheep milk is so rich, sweet and thick on its own that it needs to be treated just a bit different then regular old cows milk.

Its also got to be one of the easiest recipes I know, here is my percents, 1 cup of Whole Sheep Milk (don’t take the cream layer off the milk before making this for sheep butter), I heaping tbsp. of minute tapicoca and one egg yolk.

Now from there you can make this as small or as big of a recipe as you want.. Typically I make a pint of milk into the pudding at a time so it goes like this..

One Pint of sheep milk (2 cups worth), 2 tbsp. of the minute tapicoca, stir and let sit for five min, add to the pan, crack and get the yolks only of the eggs, lightly beat.. add to the pan, heat at a slow simmer till just boiling, stirring gently the whole time (otherwise it sticks to the bottom), once its reach a slow boil.. take off heat, Pour into container, cover, let sit for ten min, then either serve warm or put in fridge to chill and serve cold.

Delightful, I don’t find that sheep’s milk needs any added sugar or honey, I don’t find you need to add the vanilla, or spices – you can and you are welcome to do so.. but I like it just the way it tastes naturally.

Posted in Food Production and Recipes | Tagged Homemade Sheep Milk Tapicoa Pudding Recipe | 6 Comments

Sheep Beestings Pudding Recipe

Posted on February 9, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

While its very tradional to make Beestings pudding by pouring in a pan with a touch of spice and doing a low slow cook in the oven, creating a type of pudding/cheese. I have done this and its delightful!

But tonight when I had a pint of fresh Colostrum (from the second day of milking) sitting in my fridge, I wanted to make a much more tradional to my own family milk pudding.

Its one from my childhood, it was milk, egg yolks, sugar an vanilla, and it was made with whole milk and more of what other would call a custard if made by grandma, as it was thin and more of a pudding if made by mom, as she would thick’n it with either corn startch or with fine tapioca flour.

I made mine more like my grandmothers but because I was making it with Beesting milk and with extra large egg yolks, it ended up right in the middle..

So on with the recipe.

2 cups of rich thick sheep colostrum milk (second or third day after birthing), this was so rich, that it had a thick layer of cream rise to the top within eight hours of fridge time.

2 tbsp. of honey (to replace the normal 1/2 cup of sugar)

1 tsp of vanilla

2 extra large egg yolks, the better quality of the egg yolks you can get, the better this will be, if you can get duck yolks, they will be perfect, if you only have chicken, that will do just fine, if they are regular large eggs, might want to consider 3 yolks.

Take the whites off the yolks (put them aside to use a different dish), lightly beat the yolks and drizzle into the milk, stirring with a whisk till well blended..

Bring to a slow simmering boil over a med heat, watch it carefully, once it starts to thicken, remove from heat, add the vanilla, mix in and pour into your dish and allow to cool before serving. (it can be eaten warm but it will be very thin) it will be much more thick once fully chilled.

Can be served with a drizzle of homemade maple syrup, can be served with some fresh berries (I thawed out a few rasberries for this portion) can be served with a bit of carmel sauce or just serve as is.. totally up to you, it can be as fancy as you want or as homespun.

Posted in Food Production and Recipes | Tagged Milking Sheep Beestings Pudding, Sheep Beestings Pudding., Sheep colustrum Pudding recipe, Sheep Milk Beestings Pudding recipe, Sheep Milk Beestings Pudding. | 1 Comment

12 Months- 12 Sausages Recipes -All Beef Sausages -The ILTTWFHCHBIISFA Sausage

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

Now I must share how this sausage got its name, which stands for:

“I like to torture Tyler with food he can’t have because it is so far away” or The ILTTWFHCHBIISFA

You see I was blank on a name for this sausage so I put up a request for idea’s on my facebook and a dear friend wrote this on my wall.. it made me laugh, and when you make me laugh, you need to be rewarded.. so he got to name it.

Another 2 pound roll but these would be fab as big fat supper suasages if you wanted to case them up..

2 Pounds of Lean Ground Beef
1 med onion, peeled, and finely diced
1/2 cup of dried sweetened cranberries-Finely Diced
1/2 a cup of dried greens, in this case dried nettles, but dried spinach or dried collarads would work, try not to use ones that would have a strong bitter after taste, If you don’t have dried greens, consider two tbsp. of dried basil and dried chives as a replacement.
1 tbsp. of dried garlic, salt, pepper,
1/2 tsp of keens dried mustard powder (for a little kick), if you don’t want to add the mustard, add in 1/2 a tsp of ground dried hot peppers of your choice.

This is going to create a lovely red and green flecked sausage with a lovely favour, we are working to bring out the beef in this sausage, Not like last month where it was all about the spicy and flavours in each bite..

I mixed the spices, fruit, onion and nettles together and then put it over the meat, mix really well with super clean just washed hands til its all mixed in, should have no area’s that look like just meat if possible.

Then you can roll into meat balls, or make small or big patties for the freezer (remember to put wax paper between them so they won’t stick, or roll logs of them in tinfoil for baking off and then browning in the fry pan.. or stuff them into sausage skins big or small for future use.

Posted in Food Production and Recipes | Leave a comment

Rendering Lard and Tallow

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

Frozen fat, big rolls of fat, Thaw just enough to move it around but ideally cut it or grind it while its still mostly frozen for ease

It always amazes me just how little fat you get, there is this myth that there is lot and lots of fat, but the truth is by the time you use the needed fat to be ground back into the ground meat, the amount left over seems like a lot because it fills the bags and weight’s nice and heavy in those bags but its not all fat..

By the time you render the lard or tallow out, you are left with lots of crackle and in this case six and half pounds of cleaned, strained o mile fat for house use, it was poured into pint jars and will be store in a cool dark place until use, (remember to use wide mouth jars for ease of access)

Posted in Food Production and Recipes | Tagged Home done lard, o mile food lard, Rendering lard, Rendering Tallow, Rendering your own home raised lard, Rendering your pasture fed lard | 2 Comments

Rolled Stuffed Beef Roast..

Posted on February 8, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

The finished dish is above and it was delightful, the flavour combo’s was perfect, its the way to take a poor cut of meat and turn it into something outstanding! This was a simple cut of a rump roast, I sliced it into a butterfly cut

Then I covered it with wrap and took the roller to it till it was flatten by about half and even out.., sprinkled with salt..

Then overlapped four slices of Bacon, trying to leave the edges free..

I then thinly sliced half a med size onion and layed them out, half of a med size red pepper, and then I sliced pieces of soft sheep cheese (but cream cheese would work) in slices and layed them down.

Salt, Pepper, Dried Nettles and Dried Horseradish greens, Once it was rolled and tucked into its pan, I covered the top of the roast with montreal steak spice, it was baked with cover on for 45 min at 350, then uncovered for 15 min, then wrapped and allow to rest for ten before slicing and serving.

Posted in Food Production and Recipes | Tagged Rolled Stuffed Beef roast Recipe | 2 Comments

Pullet Eggs means Homemade Pasta in my house..

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

The young hens born last summer are coming online as layers.. First itty bitty egg, pullet eggs lined up with a regular large egg next to it.

Now pullet eggs mean fresh pasta to me.. its a family thing, my grandmother and my mother would see the fresh new pullet eggs and say.. its pasta time.. and now I do it 🙂

I hope you can see that the yolks are almost the same, but if you look at the white, the pullet egg has a tight small white, all the rest of the extra fluid and look at how much bigger the white is on the regular egg.

Now some folks go yolk only when they make pasta and then this is a moot point but if you make your pasta with full fresh eggs, the pullet egg is the egg of choice (well behind a duck egg, they rock it as a pasta egg )

Posted in Critters | Tagged Making homemade fresh pasta, Pullet eggs used to make fresh pasta | 3 Comments

Frugal Friday- Bean Pot- two buck buy!

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

Lovely little bean pot found at the second hand store, perfect six portion size for us.

The finished meal, baked beans with sausage..

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged frugal friday.. | 1 Comment

No Riding Brandy for a couple months..

Posted on February 6, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

Well, it started a couple weeks ago, Brandy was just a bit lame, then she was a bit more lame and then a bit better, then it got worse, but I kept checking for all kinds of things and nothing.. just this one spot on her heel, it was like there was a spot gaping out and it was tender inside. I had a booking and it was not urgent, but was in contact with my ferrier on the issue.

So it was confirmed on the ferrier visit that I was right on the reason and it would appear that ice got in under a bit and then it would have been pulled out like a plug, and even worse, it then got stuff back up with snow/ice/bedding, I have dug it out a number of time but of course in a matter of hours it fills back up.

So the cure is really simple, iodine mixed with Vaseline, I will need to clean it out daily, then cover the area with the iodine/Vaseline mix, one will help tough’n up the area, and the Vaseline will help keep the area cleaner for a just a bit longer.

The example that was given, was picture you skinning your finger, hurts, its tender, but not enough to bleed, but every time you push it, its tender again, and the only real cure is to be careful with that area, and to grow back the skin.

Same thing with Brandy, its tender, it needs to be cleaned, treated and then its a matter of time to allow it to grow and heal.. the good thing is that it happened at a time, when It can’t get thush etc, because of the cold temps, the bads news is was the dang ice/cold/sleet/snow that caused the issue.

But at least she is not the only one, lots of owners calling for the same type reason, but no winter riding for her, typically will take two to three months for her to properly heal up from where she is at today..

Thankfully, no stall rest, no reduced outdoor time, just daily care and she can keep her regular routine..

I guess I will need to dig out my horse training books and work on other skills over the next couple months, will see what we come up with..

Posted in Critters | Tagged horse hoof care | 4 Comments

Our first set of twin lambs!

Posted on February 6, 2014 by Just another day on the farm

Finally, its the first year since we started breeding the sheep that we didn’t have just one birthing at the very end of dec or the first of the year.. but not this year.. Dec came and went, and then Jan.. o my.. it was Feb before I knew it.. and still I watched the sheep waddle around..

One of the babies called and it carried over the snow from the barn to the house, the deep bellow grunting answering call came from a momma sheep and with a grin and stomp in the and through the snow, feet carried us out to the barn.

You see the water is done as close to the house as you can get, the hay is feed out in view and so this morning, a ewe stayed behind in the barn, stayed with her two wee ones and was missed in the counts but not for long..

Now its time to move her and the babe’s into the jug, time for her to get a nice bucket of fresh warm water with molasses, a big feed of fresh hay, fresh covering of bedding, a dipping of cords, a checking of sex, a checking of the bag on the momma, I have already seen both babies nurse with wagging tails but only on the same side, need to check that the plug is out of the other teat.

And then they will all settle in for a couple days to a week as they bond, nurse, sleep and grow.. welcome to the farm, welcome to the new year.. welcome to our first lambs!

Pictures coming when we can bring them out and get photos in the daylight.