Wild Caught and Processed on the boat Salmon -So amazing

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

A truck pulled into my driveway and is gents from Quebec, now their prices are so high its crazy and their selection is very limited, but their salmon is heaven!

I’m bought a box, and I am down to just a few peice’s left, I have their card and I think I will have to plan a trip down to their fish market and bring back some more fresh caught fish.

Pan Seared Salmon with Skin on, grilled asparagus with fresh new potato’s from the garden, don’t you just love how soft and sweet their skins are when cooked right just after they leave the ground, you can barely give them a good scrub without losing some.

Ps, J picked a giant puffball but it was only just getting started at the size of a baseball.

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Summer Stirfry with Free Range Chicken Breast Recipe

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Here is our lunch today, I thawed and sliced into stirfry stripes a nice free range rooster breast, and then sliced up from the garden, four roma tomatos, two handfuls of green beans, a med size zucchini and from the store, a fourth of a cabbage head, salt, and pepper to taste, I started the meat off in some coconut oil till no more pink and then added the veggies, typically I would have added in onion and garlic but I am off those for the moment.. Makes its own sauce.. and its so yummy, don’t you just love summer meals from the garden? What did you have for lunch today?

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Elderberry’s then and now..

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

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Miss Fancy in all her Middle Age Glory..

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

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Taleweaver Ramblings- Questions and Answers..

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Just another day on the farm
Ok, I am cheating, I will answer Teleweavers Questions because I adore and her blog and I am honoured to have been asked but I am not playing and passing this along..
1) What prompted you to start and maintain a blog?

I started the blog so that my family could keep up on what was happening with the farm and my world, I have maintained the blog because a) I like it, and b) because regular folks read it and comment, it makes my day to get comments.

2) What makes you smile?

Wow, that’s not as easy to answer as you would think, almost everything can make me smile, I like my family, friends, critters, garden, forest, world, travel, my baby turtle, bugs, but if there is one thing that will always make me stop and smile its the wind moving thought tree’s or over grass,  with water a close second.

3) What is your favorite season of the year?

Winter, I love winter, the cold, the crisp clean white, the bite in the air, its the time of the year to slow down and breath..

4) Zombies are coming! What’s the first thing you do?

Ah..curse in a very unlady like manner and then get on with it.. It would rhyme with duck..

5) Are you a tea or coffee kind of person?

Nothing beats a campfire Coffee special for me, that means its a fully loaded triple, triple in tim’s speak.. but I drink more tea then coffee when I am home on the farm, but as soon as I am around my mom, dad or my coffee crazy SIL-C, the coffee lover that I was born and raised to be comes out.

6) What hobbies do you have, if any?

I have a good number, they flex and change with time, but knitting has stayed with me since i was little.

7) Do you watch television or read books predominantly?

Books, and while I like my kindle, I love to hold a book while I read, and I can read alot, if I am having a in bed book day, I can read three or four average books, I also have a collection of books that I can re-read over and over and over again.. my all time favorite is Raptor Red, I have read it well over a hundred times now, and hope to again before I leave this world.

8) Would you classify yourself as a deep thinker?

I would not, but Dh says that I am a thinker, compared to him, I don’t think so!

9) If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

Peace River country in Alberta

10) What do you think is the healthiest habit one can have?

Eat real food, raise it, grow it, process it so that you know what it is and how it was made.. What you eat truly is what you are..

11) If society were to go BOOM tomorrow, what would you miss the most?

My famiy, I live to far away, if the world went boom, it would be like they were gone and that would just ripe a peice of my heart right then and there..
Posted in Life moves on daily | 4 Comments

Sending a shout out for DH!

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

So as a some of you know, Dh is a writer, he writes alot of short stories and has completed a novella as well as working on on novel, he also belong to a local writers group that meets a couple times a month and gives each other a helping hand in read and giving feedback on their writing idea’s, styles etc.

Well, he had never really put anything in to be published, he was writing for himself more then anything, and then took a seminar on how to get published this year and so while I was at mom’s, he sent in his first story and within a very short time, he got a no.. something every writer will get, however he wrote a peice for a collection of short stories by canadian authers for superhero’s and supervillins and he sent it in, and waited and waited and the first draft came back with edits and request for rewrites on this or that, and he did so and yesterday, he got the letter back that its a YES!

They had a few extra little edits, nothing that bothered him at all, and so his first paid and published story will be going out to book stores in the early part of 2013, and he is currently being writing a zombie story for a different short story collection, and if he can pull it together around the story ark that we have figured out, it will rock! Got to ask the zombie queen (that would be me) for feedback on this and that.. I know what is normal and I know what will pull the fans and yet what is just different enough that its not the same old, same old.. and I think we have come up with something that could really fly! ;P

So proud of my guy!

Posted in Life moves on daily | 8 Comments

Health Update

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Well, a day late is better then not, Could not get the net to work well yesterday, so finally just gave up, we must have had lightening or something hit to close, the phone line is all cracking and whining again, it will clear but it take a bit.

So lets see this week has been a off and on one..

Off in the sense of

  • Low Blood Pressure on the weekend lead to dizzy and lightheadedness which lead to swaying and a harmless stumble or two, which meant that I had to take it easy, and do a few things different then planned. Thankfully by tuesday it was up alot, still not quite at my normal range but much! better
  • Didn’t get my butchering done (see above) which meant no fresh meat in the house this week, so I hit the freezers and still came up with a nice varity of things for the menu but I was really looking forward to some fresh.

Now onward to the On’s

  • First was that I stayed on my choosen meal paths, and I am figuring out things to make that I really like at the moment, turns out that sweet potato 50% with carrot 25% and fresh garden baby potato 25% with a touch of butter is heaven on a spoon, add in a sprinkle of salt and lick the bowl yummy at the moment.
  • The garden is producing and with this week of almost rain every single day, everything is growing, flowering and or growing fruits, beans etc as fast and hard as they can, we had hard but brief rains a couple days but yesterday, we had slow steady farmers rain for around six hours plus and last night we had good steady rain for hours, for the first time this season, we had a full mist morning, it was a delight to the senses in so many ways.  This also means that things are coming in from the garden daily.
  • My weight has done a nice slow decline this week at the three pd mark and I am happy with that, I figured that the very rapid would need to slow down at the first little while, Dh is down another pound or so as well.
  • This week was a struggle with in regards to hormone/fertility, not going into more detail on that one on the net but safe to say that this has been having an effect on me this month, the reason that I am sharing this is because it means that the diet is! having an effect on the different levels in my body and that means that it can use the progestorone being produced more effectively, and ideally not be trapping it in my fat cells as quickly as it has been, all truly wonderful news!
  • I have not done nearly as much excerise as I should be, I have been talking walks to the end of the lane and back, and I have been swimming with a watchful eye on me, but mainly I have been just working in the house and farm, and keeping my pink health watch on me so that I can keep track of BP and Heart Rate, so I know that I have been getting it up there a bit but not for as long or as hard as I should be.

So that has been my weeks, and a little up and down but much Much more ups! how was everyone else’s week?

Posted in Life moves on daily | 3 Comments

Climate change and our local bugs

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

I have been very unhappy with the crazy amounts of horseflies that are on the farm this year, they seem to be thriving in this heat in record numbers but compared to what I have been hearing on the CBC, that appears to be the least of my worries, first a number of years ago, there was a steady increase within my own area for heartworm for the hounds, Ok, I might not like giving them meds but given that the treatment is worse then the way to prevent it, it just makes sense to treat them monthly during the season and give their bodies a break during the winter months.

So first it was West Nile being on the increase in our area, ok, not good but unless you are young, old or have a immune issue, you should be ok, still not something to just blow off, however battling those pesky whiners, is nothing new on the farm, I will not use chemicals, I use ducks and they do a outstanding job, I use a number of those healthy ways, I reduce what can collect water, I use gold fish, I use mesh and if we are going into the woods, we will take along the bug dope, but we use it as sparely as possable while still getting the job done.

But the news that Lime carrying Ticks are now breeding and creating populations in and around is enough to make me get a mild “frown” for half a second at least, then I just sighed, I have had a plan in place in case this happened, first we already keep longer grass area as limited, no go area’s, we keep the one area long for the fireflies each year and then give it a cut down, we already go into the woods in pants, boots and light long sleeve shirts most of the time and I am of long habit a checker for ticks, and leeches so just need to be a little more checky then normal..

And then comes the big guns, I got on the phone and put a order in for six (the lowest order I could) can you guess what I will be getting??

Did you say guinea fowl really fast? cause I did, I don’t want to many, would like a trio of two female and one male when its all said and done, while the chickens and the ducks do a great job in the front yard, the guinea fowl are bigger roamers, and as they are great flyers, I am planning to raise them to think that the big barn is their “home” this means that my front yard will be kept clean from the chickens and ducks, but that the barn and pastures will be the guinea fowl range, it won’t stop the ticks from coming from the woods around me, but it will go a long way to keeping the amounts down.
While Lime can be controlled if you catch it fast enough and get your treatments done, otherwise, it can lead to long term health issues and to make matters even worse is the fact that it appears that many local doctors don’t believe that lime is in the area and or don’t seem to think about lime when they are thinking you have the flu, while it helps greatly if you have the bull’s eye rash, but often folks don’t, which I understand makes it harder to get the treatment you require.

Posted in Critters | 6 Comments

Farmgal’s Duck Liver with apple/green tomato recipe

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

I was admiring this lovely post from Edible harmony and decided that I also wanted a good feed of Liver and onions, but mine turned out a bit different then her’s, so tradional and I do love tradional but I ended up playing in the kitchen on this one, its not that tradional trust me!

http://www.edibleharmony.com/liver-and-onions/

Farmgal’s Liver and Onions -As I was the only one going to eat these, it was made as a single serving, feel free to adjust the recipe for two or more.. 1 duck liver per person.

1 Large Duck Liver- I soaked this liver, and then sliced it into 1 inch thick peices- think stirfry stripes- salt and pepper sprinkled on them
1 med apple
1 med onion
1 med green tomato
1 tbsp of butter
A pinch of basil
A tiny splach of a good sweet dessert wine – I used a brandy icewine.
Salt, Pepper to taste

Ok, so in a cast iron fry pan, add your thinly sliced apple, onion and green tomato, along with your butter, med-low heat, you don’t want to burn anything, you want to soften and cook, with min stiring so that it melds but does not mush, then add you pinch of basil, your salt/pepper and your wine, allow to simmer for just a bit till heated and meld together, then mound onto the plate, which you will put the just cooked liver on top of, I served it with a side of baby boiled garden fresh potato’s..

In a small second cast iron fry pan, put a little duck fat into it, or what ever fat you want, but not butter, on a med-high heat, you place your salted and peppered stripes into the heated oil, cook for about a min each side, maybe a min and half, don’t over cook the liver, cook these with enough room that each peice gets its own space in the pan, try and get them in evenly an quickly as they are going to fast cook, and then out and onto the plate..

I really wish I could find my camera (think I might have to buy a new little one soon) as I am missing being able to put up photo to go with..

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Loukanika Sauage Recipe- Lamb/Pork Mix

Posted on August 6, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Wow, this recipe seemed tailor made for me for the fall after butcher day, but I made a small version of it just to try it out.. heavenly and I will be making a big batch of this later..

Now the orginal recipe is in Home Sausage Making, 3rd edition by Susan Perry and Charles Revis, wonderful book! 5 baa out of 5..

I didn’t have everything I needed for the offical recipe so I ended up with a modified version which I will share here but having said that I kept the basics..

Loukanika Pork and Lamb sausage..

So they called for a 2 to 1 ratio of pork to lamb, and I kept that, so 2 pds of pork for each pd of lamb, This is a good way to use up that shoulder meat, they recommended pork fat, but I went with duck, don’t know if that really effected the end result that much or not.. 1 onion, 4 cloves of garlic, 1 tsp ground coriander, 1 tsp ground kosher salt, 1 tbsp of ground cumin, 1 tsp of fresh ground black pepper, it called for fresh thyme, which got switched with fresh horseradish greens, 2 tsps of fresh chopped greens, 1/4 dried ground orange peel, and it called for a certain kind of bandy, I didn’t have it, so I went crown royal, again, it without a doubt had to effect the flavour but it was so awesome!

So chilled and grind your meat, or just buy it ground, cook your onion, garlic with a touch of oil till soft and clear, let it get cold before using, then combine everything above but the brandy or whiskey, give it a mix, and re-grind it with a fine disk, if not, I am sure that the course will work but its texture would be much improved if you can regrind it. Then add your booze :), mix well by hand and either stuff or make mini meat balls , or make breakfast patties or make logs that are then wrapped tightly in foil and baked.. your choice..

Will keep up to 3 days in the fridge or up to 3 months in the freezer if properly wrapped..

I baked them and then added them into a just cooked down mix of garden fresh tomato’s, zucchini, basil and mushrooms, over a bed of spagettit squash or for those eating pasta, I think it would work with pasta in a wonderful way.. for my own plate, I also added in a little chopped black olive.. just yum!

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