Goat Stuffed Grape Leaves in a Red Pepper Sauce with Greek yogurt..

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

http://www.fatsecret.com/calories-nutrition/usda/grape-leaves

Even if you live in a place in canada that you can’t grow grapes themselves, unless you are really far north, you can most likely grow grape leaves, these are lovely in a number of dishes but I tend to stick to the main one of using them as a wrap, I find unlike a cabbage roll where the cabbage is itself part of the flavour of the dish, when it comes to grape leaves the middle and the sauce is the main flavour with just a hint of the grape leaf..

Add in the fact that I am working on removing wheat from my plate at this time and that means no bread, no wraps, no dough of any kind and suddenly being able to use my grape leaves as a wrapping becomes even more useful then normal!

Just to add to the wonderful news about grape leaves, they are only 3 calories each..

Goat Stuffed Grape Leaves in a Red Pepper Sauce with Greek yogurt..

1 pd of goat hamburger meat
1 med onion finely diced
1 clove garlic finely diced
1 can of sweet corn
Salt and Pepper to taste..

1 jar of sweet roast pepper sauce

40 to 50 fresh (or canned) grape leaves about the size of your hand..

A heaping tablespoon of extra thick greek yogurt, homemade or store got..

If you have fresh grapes, go pick ones just bigger then your hand, you want to still get the fresher lighter green leaves and you need to trim off the stem itself, wash and let them rest while you prepare the filling, cook your meat, onion and garlic together, then add your corn, saving your juice if you want.. turn off heat.. take one heaping tablespoon per leave, and place in middle, fold edges and roll and place in your shallow one row only baking pan, repeat till its full, I had a cup or so of the middle mix leftover, can be used as a excellent mix with eggs for a awesome breakfast omlet.

Then pour a 2 cup jar of sweet roasted red pepper sauce over them, I mixed in my corn juice to make it a touch less thick, this was my homemade version, perhaps a store got one for pasta would not require the thinning? Bake in a hot 375 oven for 20 or 25 min till the leaves are tender and it is smelling heavenly.. Serve 4 to 6 on each plate with a heaping spoon of yogurt

Leftovers can be reheated, and are just as good the next day! Enjoy..

Posted in Food Production and Recipes | 5 Comments

First of the garden count is in.. Currents, and Blueberries..

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

Well, the first of the fruit count is in this year and it surely does reflect a different spring and what late frosts can do..

Red Currents- a mear 8 cups worth- $6 dollars worth locally..
No on farm black or white currents- $0 dollars
Wild Currents- Just as bad.. done and empty.. did they have some while I was gone or did the birds get them all?

Thankfully, I have a reasonable amounts of red current jelly, juice and about 4 pds still frozen in the freezer for the use in 2012, still I will be pruning, feeding and remulching the bushes this year, in the hopes that I get a much more typical crop in amounts next year.. given that I have 12 current bushes on the farm at the moment, that is one very poor crop indeed.

My blueberry on farm yield was even worse this year.. for a total of count it! Nine berries.. what is that $ .10 cents worth LOL
Thankfully, there does seem to be a very limited amount of wild blueberries available, but even they are very lean pickings, what should have clusters with good size berries, have only one or two and they are smaller and drier.

Thankfully, last year was a good blueberry year, and I still have a full case of 12 blueberry fruit, 8 jars of blueberry pie filling, 4 jars of blueberry juice, and 12 pds of frozen berries in the big freezer yet..

On the flip side, my elderberry bushes are so loaded with started fruit that I will need to either trim off clusters or prop up branches and I had a look at my chokeberries and they are loaded to the hilt, as are the grapes and the high bush cranberries.. hmmm we will see if they turn out in the end, I certianly hope so..

Posted in farm | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

Working with girl- New gear and hauling ditch hay-bedding..

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

Well, decided that I wanted to get out and give Girl a run though to see just how much back sliding we had done since I have not worked with her for a good solid six weeks..

Somethings were fine, others not so much, plus I threw some new things at her..

So tied her up and gave her a nice brush down and checked her feet, did a little work, this went well, put her new (old)brichen on her that I got as a pair at that last sale for 5 dollars, its old and needs a good cleaning and for sure some leather oil but all in all does the job just fine, attached that to her front pad an we were set to give that a whirl.. that part went very well on the road, she was able to do “walk on” gee, haw, easy, and whoa, as well as stand and back with no issues.. good Girl!

then we moved on to hauling hay, didn’t go quite as well, with the new set up, the tie places meant that when she shifted the load, I got to see that done wrongly, that it becomes a bucking strap. poor girl, and she would not settle down enough for me to move it or shift the load, needless to say that was not fun and she stepped on my foot to boot! Thankfully, she was still with it enough to back when I said it sharply..

Finally got her settled, calmed and we redid the load so that didn’t happen again.. and then we hit the biggest snag of the day.. you see when we are on the road, she still understood that it was work time but as for the past weeks she has been walked up and down in her head gear and lead rope and then put out to graze, which meant that as soon as we started down the lane, she thought she could just head off and go eat, instead of staying in work mode.. and this became a running battle between her wanting to graze and me wanting her to stay in work mode..

Needless to say, I was doing my best to have things end on a high note, so we finished working back on the road, where her mind was on us and work instead of grazing, but I can see that I have some daily work ahead of me to get this bad habit removed! otherwise, I will have to order and put a basket on her so she can’t graze while working..sigh..

When she was little, I would often do the back lean in a stand an we worked to the point that this could go on for a few min but now that she is tall enough, I can’t do this anymore, so I had to get Dh to do the back lean and weight, she did great so today we took the next step in teaching her how to be riden and DH was not to happy about jumping up on her back and over while balancing with his feet a good foot plus off the ground, on the other hand, Girl was perfect, it didn’t even faze her.. Awesome!!

So the plan this week, go back to working with her to head up when in gear (no grazing) working on teaching her to spin on command(trick training) working her back with long leads both for riding training and also for training in her gear and brichen with her tie behind her pulling a tire..

Here’s to a good and productive week with my cow..

Posted in oxen | 2 Comments

Bright Eyes Aka the Baby Turtle, giving the best grump face ever!

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

Posted in Critters, Life moves on daily | Tagged | 3 Comments

My biggest Huh when I arrived home..

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

Hello Everyone..

Wow did that last week of my time out west get busy, sorry for not answering emails or getting anything up on the blog, this daughter, sister, aunty and cousin was takening time off from the online world to make lovely memories in real time 🙂

After a long (rumbling, that was some awesome rocking on the plane) flight home I took my first day to get settled and to adjust to the heat (ah) and I am slowly making my way across the farm checking on so many things, and as I did a ton of posts came into my head, I love that my farm does that for me.. for example, my elderberries are so loaded that I will need to help the branches or they will break under the weight, which is why hubby should have taken more of the flowers off to dry..

I was surprised (and not in a good way) to see the effects of limited rain and overwhelming heat is doing to my garden, we have good looking crops on many staples but not so good on a number of my “extra’s”..

Now on to what I really want to talk about today and that is sometimes the books are all wrong..and life will find a way..

Let me explain that a little bit.. in every single composting book I own, they talk about fowl, pig, sheep and cow manure all needing at least one full year to compost down enough that they won’t be “hot” to the point of killing plants, and that things won’t grow in straight compost piles and that has been my personal view, when we do our big high piles, the steam rises, the piles heat up to the point, nothing grows and the first year, its just a big ol compost pile..

However last year we did something a little different, when we cleaned out the big barn, I decided that we would put the deep pack cleaning into “no mans land” and we would do it in long rows of about 30 feet long and about 3 feet or so high, it make a space about 30 by 60 feet or so of this rolling compost pile, well, it had sat out for the winter and didn’t seem to have done much at all over the winter and spring, which didn’t suprise me to much as I figured it would not compost at the same rate because of the way we made it.

What I was not Expecting! at all was that over 40 plus tomato plants would self-seed after passing though my piggies, and that by the first week of july, we would need to be staking tomato plants that are already in bloom and in at least a few case have small green tomato’s on them.. they are in the sheep pasture area, and they have not been touched, I would not trust the cow or the pigs to leave them alone if given a chance but they are self-sown and thriving in straight hot compost.. I’m doing a Huh here..

First, plants should not be growing in staight compost, never mind the hot factor
Second, tomato seeds can live though a pigs system? or did they end up in the bedding?
Third, everything I have ever read says that tomato plants that are allowed to self-start in our area would not produce and set fruit in time for harvest (that is why we all early start in the house or the greenhouse?)
Fourth, how is it possable that self-sown, never watered, in the middle of a black bare compost pile are out flowering my carefully done garden ones that have weeks of lead time on them?
Fifth-? I can’t help but be interested to see which one or ones of my hertiage tomato plants did this?

Welcome the extra crop that’s coming, will keep you posted..

Posted in Life moves on daily | 15 Comments

My love of books is a family thing..

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

In the bedroom I am staying in at mom’s there is a whole wall in bookcases, a good reading chair in the corner with a spot of tea pot, and the bookshelves are full to bursting.. This was the pile that caught my eye and I am slowly making my though them.. so its my current reading list at the moment..

On the top of that pile is a little book published in 1970 that my mom picked up for me, called Wilderness and plenty by Frank Fraser Darling..

 Let me just say that what was known then, is alot of what is known now, and things have not changed that much.. Still it was very interesting to see how many of the same issues where being brought to light in the year of 1970 are in fact a reflection of what we are seeing and hearing about in 2012..

Let me leave you with a final qoute from this book..

” There can be no greater moral obligation in the environmental field then to ease out the living space and replace dereliction by beauty. Most peaple will nver know true wilderness although its existence will not be a matter of indifference to them. The near landscape is valuable and loveable because of its nearness, not something to be disregarded and shrugged off; It is where children are reared and what they take away in their minds to own long future. What ground could be more hallowed?”

What are you currently reading at the moment? and have any of my older readers ever read this book, or would you share what book you read in the 60’s/70’s that had a impact on your thoughts on the world etc?

Posted in Book Reviews | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Neither here nor there.. but somewhere..

Posted on June 27, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

When I was a child, my momma used to call me her “fay” child, always one foot planted on the ground and one foot into that world that only I seemed able to see..

When I was a teenager, my momma used to call me a “Day Dreamer” with one foot in the here and now and one foot in the past or the future..

When I was in my 20’s my momma used to say that I was “finding my way” with one foot in the here and now and one foot flying as high as I could get it, always trying a new way, a new path and seeing how it fit me..

Now that I am coming in a close to my 30’s my momma “say’s I am walking the hard path”, that I have made a number of choices in my life that show that the “old ways” call me but that it means I have things harder them most modern folks choose to have, no cell phone, no dishwasher, no microwave, and the list goes on..

Well this past few weeks I have been feeling that same kind of many pulls but on a much smaller scale, one part of my mind is home on the farm with DH, trying to keep track of what has been planted, was the cow breed, how are the ducklings and the rabbits, how is the fruit crop, how is the rain, having a section of my mind at work on this each day is important, what those crops do will have a impact on how much time I need to put away different foods, what the on farm crops are producing effect how much wild forage I need to plan for to make up the difference..

One part is here with mom, playing nurse and keeping up on the housework, the laundry, the yard and her gardens, as well as being the mostly full time cook (but they do much more takeout then I am use to but while I am torn between take-out, the breaks from cooking is nice too) I have been blessed with family time, company time and been trying to find time to both spend with dad and also get time on the farm.

However there is a third thing that I find heavy in my thoughts and on my mind daily, and its the overview of the world itself, I am watching what is happening at the G20, what is happening in the Euro Crisis, I am watching what is happening weather wise right here in Canada, I am watching the reports on lost fruit crops, the reports of flooding river, of drought in other area’s, and I am having that info churn in my head.

I have to say that I can see such a differnce between sitting and listening to family, and friends talk about what is happening here in alberta in terms of work, home and growth, vs sitting and visiting with friends in ontario about work, home and growth, its like having one foot in ontario, and one foot in alberta.. while there is common ground, its not the same in the two province’s.. and Its stiking to me on this trip, I saw hints of it on the last two trips home but this one its night and day in a number of ways.

If there is one thing I have learned over the years, its that I don’t think I will ever be in just one place, or on just one path, I am always going to be a Neither here nor there.. but its ok, because I am always somewhere..

 

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

A special treat for those with high speed :)

Posted on June 25, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

As you know, I don’t share to many direct photo of me or my love ones, more likely to get a side or back view 🙂 but today I am sharing something I took on this trip that I will be holding dear to my heart for many years to come.. I hope this works, my first video done this way.. My mom has always sang  for as long as I can remember but her voice has changed since she really started having lung problems (its a liver issue but it effects her lungs) so she does not sing near as much as she can lose her breath..  Hope you will enjoy it..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfOE_SVr_uQ&feature=youtu.be

Posted in Family | 7 Comments

Dad’s Coulee Views and Photos..

Posted on June 25, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

Posted in Family | 4 Comments

A this and that post, a little catchup both on the farm and here as well..

Posted on June 25, 2012 by Just another day on the farm

The Elderberries are in full bloom at home now, I have asked DH to dry me at least nine trays worth of flowers and then put them in glass jar in the dark for later use, these are amazing fresh in gooseberry/elderflower pie. The flowers are also excellent dried in homemade tea’s.

Toad update, looks like there are at least three different aged tadpoles in there for sure, the oldest have grown legs and are climbing the sides of the trough and also up the wood post, and leaving for the big wide world of the farm yard, others are just starting to get their changes and others still are very young.. The little turtle is currently nicknamed Bright Eye’s and was stopped sunning itself on the log, as it turned out, moving them was a very worth while effort, as the high heat dried the mini-pond and anything not moved, died from the heat/lack of water.. but this way, several hundred (300 to 500) or so more little toads have a chance of developing to age and spending their summer/fall eating lots and lots of bugs in my garden/food forest area’s..

I have been told that the garden grows by leaps and bounds, my Dh has spent the last two days, weeding, mulching, mowing and getting the last of the seeds for june planted, in before they say that the farm will be getting four to five days of rain.. I have been told that our corn came up with about a 90% rate, that we have tons of blooms on the pepper plants and lots of tomato’s and blooms on the plants, that everything is doing well..

I on the other hand, got out to dad’s farm, (that big hill and that flat land with the outbuildings is his place :), where there was a little time on the quad, a bit of work with bare wire, some gate building, and I got to check out a few of his new toys!

What a sweet Machine!

But of course, I also checked out what was growing and what stage it was at, here are his saskatoons by the edge of his lawn.. Then on the way home, stopped and got a as always to short visit in with Kodi and family, still it was great to see them..

 

Posted in farm | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments