Emergency Meal Kit Challenge!

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Homestead Revival is hosting a Emergency Meal Kit Challenge, its a interesting idea, I have to admit that DH was not quite on board, he just looked at me and said that is the point of the pantry, and I see his point, I really do.. however where the challange was for me is the idea of a whole day of planned meals that would all last six months in storage while at the same time as homemade as possable.. while having limited water and heating..

Now the idea is that its a natural weather issue that knocks out water and power for three days in the house, but we are in fact home when it happens, I have to admit that do store water by the case in the bottles for so many days, I also store water by the drum, but given that I also have a hand pump on the back deep drilled well, the odds of us having truly limited water is not likely but lets assume that we are being very careful with the amount as we need to pump it and haul it to the house.

The second thought I have is regardless of the storm, the hens are still going to lay eggs, and the sheep or the milk cow is still going to need to be milked, which means I will have both of these coming in fresh, 9 out of 12 months, there will also be the garden in some form or other for fresh..

Now lets say that this happens in the dead of winter, I am still going to have either a) the propane stove/oven combo available to me, but to play it fair that others don’t have that as a backup, I will move over to the Ecozoom stove for heating and cooking of food, combined with both the Shuttle Chef cooker combined with the Thermos’s that can be used to keep hot tea for later use, and also for cooking..

So here is my planned menu for a day..

Breakfast-Baking Powder Bisquits-Hard Tack Style

  • Home Rendered Lard
  • Flour
  • Baking Powder
  • Salt
  • Powdered Whole Milk, or Canned Milk from storage or Fresh milk from the barn
  • If using Powdered Milk it can be pre-mixed and stored in a jar, and then just add water.

I have made these in my cast iron wear on the Ecozoom so I know that it can be done with quite easily, to this I am added a jar of homecanned Lamb Sauages that can be heated and put into halfs and stacked in the bisquits, with Canned Peaches, saving the juice for a later use, Hot Mint Tea.

Lunch is simple

Homecanned Chili with the other half of the Bisquits, along with hot mint tea

Supper- Canned Cubed Chicken with Chicken Broth, Jar of Canned Corn, a handfull of Dried greens, once it been brought up to a simmer, add in a cup of coucous allow to sit for five min and then serve with Hot Peach Mint Tea.

Snack-Pickles.. Dill, Crunchy, when I am stressed I like the salty and the crunch..

Now, everything is shelf stable (other then the fresh farm products that would be a choice), now if they were not used, then the only off the farm is Flour, Powdered Milk, Salt, and Spices, the rest is all food grown or raised on the farm and then processed into shelf-stable meals in my own kitchen..

 

Posted in Food Storage | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Pecking Order on the farm..

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

I have so many post rumbling around my head today, I promised to do a post on how to make a good basic bread with photos, I am working on a butcher post with ways to perserve that meat from salting to canning it among a number of others, but what keeps coming to the top is two main thoughts

a) Reflections on critter watching, including some very interesting cross species interactions

B) The NYC and now world-wide protests that happened this weekend, including at least three in Canada, one in toronto, one in ottawa and one in Vancouver, I think there were more but those where the ones that I heard talked about and that had interviews, one of the main things that struck me was that in canada at least, there was no one “idea” that was drawing them all together, there was some protesting the goverment, some women’s rights, some Native rights and the list went on.. The one thing that did seem to come across on our main stream media was “we are the 99 percent, and we want the 1 percent to listen to us”.

Now let me be clear, I am not sure that was the message that was meant to get across, I have been interviewed a number of times for TV and in newspapers, and I rarely find that what you say is REALLY what is reports, its typically a shading of the truth with spin on it..

However, that saying stuck in my head as I went about my weekend of chores, we worked in the barns on the weekend, with the big move being moving Miss Piggy to a new pen to dig up, and working to clean out her past pen to turn into a jug for the coming due ewe next week, I am so looking forward to that fresh milk in the house again.

So I spent hours out with the flock of sheep, interacting with the cow, who was also interacting with the sheep, add in the pig, and then add in the birds, the ducks, geese, turkeys and the chickens, along with some barn cats and its a well rounded out mix of small/large critters, along with a interesting mix of herd animals.

So the first group of critters that caught my eye was the birds, this is a interspecies flock of birds and they get along quite well really but they had decided that the one single chocolate duckling was “different” from everyone else, and someone forgot to explain to the other baby birds that you are NOT Allowed to pick on the someone just because they are different.. what you say caused this outbreak of “ahhh”, a tiny white spot on a otherwise yellow foot, this was a cue that this poor little one would be hassled and momma bird didn’t care much, Farmgal did.. and she fixed the issue right quick, most likely not in a way that a true green momma should have but what the heck, sometimes you just need to be creative.. I went to the house, got the food coloring dye, and put a drop of yellow on that foot and dyed it, went back out, threw in fresh greens, and some windfall apples and when no one was looking slipped the little guy back in the group, problem solved for the moment anyway..

So my question on that one is.. Should the 99 percent won on that case, should they have been allowed to push that 1 percent to get what they wanted no matter the cost.. I am not saying that the 1 percent was not different then the others, it was.. but still not sure its ok for the majority to decide that at this moment in time with no outside overview being given that they can just take what they want, and dam the one that gets hurt..

Sure, you can make the case that the average hardworking joe vs the Uber-Rich can’t compare to a group of chicks/turkey pullets and ducklings deciding that a  little duckling need to be gotten, and I would even agree to a large point.. right up until you have remember that like it or not that uber-rich is still a living breathing being, that’s where it get tricky.

But the barnyard was not done with me yet.. O no, it decided to give the example of the one percent showing their strength and being a bully.. aka Girl, the now one year old heifer, she can still be a bit of a handful when she is excited to see you, but a tap on the nose and she settled right now, I am head cow, and she knows it, but the rest of the barn, O boy is she the one, she lets the sheep know that they will give way to her, thank you so much, now she is friendly with Miss Piggy but they don’t get to be loose at the same time normally,

 well this weekend,  Miss Piggy was following me around cuz I am the farm momma, and I moved from one pasture to another and she followed, but Girl was in the other pasture, and I got to watch a 800-900 pd cow, give a lesson to a 300-400 pd pig.

You see, Girl is head boss after me, and Miss Piggy thought she should be second after me.. this meant that they both felt they were equal.. Cow did a head swing, piggy did a grunt back and a thunk into legs, and next thing I know, I am watching them having a push shove, and its all over in less then 45 second, the cow flipped the pig, pig gets up and shakes it off, and everyone settles, so I start walking again, and I can’t help but see what is happening behind me.. Me, Cow at my back, not quite touching me, Pig walking back from her head, just past her shoulder in respect and behind them trailing is sheep.. A good six feet behind both of the them..

Now was it really fair that the cow used her very hard head, and extra strength and leg length to put Miss piggy from her feeling of I’m eqaul to show her in no uncertain terms, you are part of the farmyard, and you have your place but I’m ahead of you.. Fair no, but do I feel that the very weathly feel the same way, that they can push those they feel are under them around.. You bet! I think they have no issue using any and all means they can to make things go the way they want..

Just like Girl didn’t think a thing about her cow-given right to be a bully with Miss Piggy, I believe that there are many peaple in postions of power that feel they can do the same to the middle and lower income classes, and I am not even going to touch on 3rd world conditions alive and well in our 1st world countries.

I would love to believe that we have grown as the human race to beyond what can be seen in the barnyard but I don’t think we have.. Do you?

Posted in Real Life | Tagged | 2 Comments

Making Sour Dough Dried Yeast for home use.

Posted on October 16, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

I have been trying out a number of different ideaès in my Preserving Food without Freezing or canning, the one that I am currently working on is how to preserve your sour dough starter, now they are giving the example so that you do not have to keep baking bread that its a back up, I on the other hand, are looking at it as a way to preserve my own special sourdough starter flavor and also for travel, this would give you a way to pack out your sour dough in a more controlled manner.

As for who have ever tried to catch a wild yeast now, it is NOT just as simple as mixing water and flour and letting it ferment, you will end up with something, but its very much a guessing game on if you will like the flavour of your sourdough.. however either by being given a start or by being lucky enough to have caught a strain you do like, having a way to perserve it is a excellent idea.

So here is the test, you add just a little extra flour to a good starter, just enough to be able to make small balls about the size of a hazelnut in the shell and you then need to dry them, you can use the sun, or the warm spot on a wood stove or by the gentle heat of cental home heating, allow to dry until the balls have hardened, they must be dry all the way though, (my first batch seemed hard until I cracked them open, and they were still damp inside)

At this point, you can grind the balls into a powder and store it in a clean dry jar in a cool dark place, and it is said to last for up to 3 months, I will let you know if that is the case.

To use again, you take out tbsp worth of the dried sour yeast powder, add water and flour and let it sit for a couple days to get going, this allows you to reset the perferred flavour and yeasts you like working with..

This is something that I hope will work just as well after a month as it says, as I typically head out west to spend time with family at least once a year, and I have lost my good starter a couple times as it was not used or feed while I was gone.

If you give this a try, please report back on how it worked for you with your starter, and how long it took to get it back, so far mine only takes two full days and is ready for use on the third.

This is a Homestead Blog Hop Post, Please Click on the link get to check out lots of homesteading idea’s on the Blog Hop!

Posted in Food Storage | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Miss Piggy all grown up..

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Its hard to be believe that its been almost a year since we had a girls trip up the valley to pick up this sweet little purebred Large Black Piglet, she was just big enough to fit in a small dog crate, she had just been weaned and spent the first couple weeks in the house getting bigger before heading out to the barn, now look at her almost year later..

My dad asked me if she has a good temperment, and the question startled me just a touch because if she didn’t have one, she would be in the freezer, instead of with planned motherhood facing her 🙂

However it is a good question that deserves a answer, compared to the other hertiage pigs we have raised since being on the farm, she is without a doubt the best pig we have had, I “think” its mostly the breed, she is even tempered, typically in a good mood, friendly and loves her back scratches to the point to still falling over to give belly, she likes to play and uses her outside and inside toys on a regular basis. She really does graze on the pasture but don’t let that fool you, she is rooting queen as well.

She earns part of her keep by being put to work in the barn rooting up the deep litter packs in the different stalls into nice light loose compost that can much more easily be moved and used in the different garden or pasture areas.

She gets along well with the sheep and cow at the odd time they are in the same pasture together, and she shows her herd willingness by wanting to be with you if you are out walking, the cow is the boss of her which is funny but they got that all figured out themselves, otherwise they seem to quite like each other. All in all, she is a very good girl and I can’t wait to see how she is as a momma!

Posted in Critters | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Chicken Ark for the Garden

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Well, I am glad that a number of folks wanted to see this project but I can’t decide if I am going to please you with our little creation or not, you see it was built out of scrape wood left overs from other projects, and so pretty was not the goal..

I have seen those amazing wonderful little chicken coops, the ones that look like little houses or baby barns or gingerbread houses, and I sure admire the work that goes into them but this litle box was put together in under two hours from start to finish, even the next box is a old reused five gallon bucket that had cracked in the bottom and could no longer hold water, and this morning it held my first green egg.

I am unhappy with the water and feed being on the ground, so as soon as I have two new smaller plastic bottles used in the house, I will wash them out, cut feed holes in them, and attach them off the heavy 2 by 4 so they don’t take ground space on the girls.. I might rethink their nest box as well and see if there is a way to hang a just big enough, but I wanted to get the girls in and working, figuring out what works best will come quickly enough. I can see moving the nest bucket each day from corner to corner will be needed so that the girls can have a go under it. The floor space is 12 square feet, I have started with four hens so 3 square feet each, compared to their normal pens, this seems like not a lot of floor space to me but given that I will be giving them fresh ground, I figure they won’t mind to much once they get used to it, I didn’t put a boy in the group because I don’t need the girls breed at this time of the year. They went in yesterday, and as you can see from the above photo, some of the greens just outside the box are at least a foot high, and already in a day the inside greens have been worked down, I will give them another day and then add some active half done compost in one corner and sprickle of scratch on the ground to keep them going at it.

Posted in Critters | 6 Comments

Food Storage Friday Roundup

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Joining in the ranks of Canadian Doomer and others like Chile Chews,  and Backyard Farm along with unprocessed real food month with its daily updates on idea’s and thoughts on how to use whole food in your diet, we are eating out of our pantry this month.

Another week has come and gone, and it included the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, so we had a long weekend with Dh home, its was a good week in terms of not eating out (none), did a little loss leader shopping including a case of peanut butter jars, I still had eight jars in the pantry but was able to find ones that are rated good till mid 2013, and as Dh can go though up to two jars a month, I would like to get a head jump on the rising peanut prices, we have tried to grow peanuts in our area before with very limited success but I am going to expand the bed and see if we can’t get a better crop this year for our own peanut source.

Eating out of the garden, and pantry/cellar was just fine this week, no issues at all, there is lots to be had, I am seeing a decrease in my fall egg laying between moulting, less daylight hours, I am currently getting a two to three eggs per six older hens, and on average six eggs per day from my current eight young layers, with a nice little flock of new layers coming up behind them. Going from a dozen to two dozen a day down to just under a dozen does show itself, but its fall butcher time, and only the best gets to be feed though the winter. My Sheep that is due to have her lambs this month is huge! but no signs of bagging up yet, so I am using a mix of frozen or canned milk, I am also using dried buttermilk powder and for some baking whole powdered milk, thankfully I have lots of cheese in the house.

On the unprocessed front can’t say that its been as good, clearly the food from the garden and farm all qualify and everything in the house is being made from scratch but there are things I am using out of the pantry that don’t fit the model and that is fine with me, I am not going to go spend money to be part of, having said that, I have been trying a little harder this week to use whole grains in most things, including doing a bit of wheat grinding to go with my unbleached but processed white flour that is the base of my baking goods.

My favorite meal of the week would be Broiled Lamb cubes with fresh horseradish/mint cream dipping sauce, with fresh mashed potato’s and roasting little garden carrots with raw local honey drizzle, with still warm Spice Pumpkin Walnut loaf with a touch of butter.

I will be using fresh grated horseradish over the next while, I have a good amount of smaller root that I planted out this spring that are being pulled for single meal cooking before I tackle my big patch for longer storage.

Here is a interesting little dressing if you want to give it try..

  • Half a cup of homemade Mayo (or store got)
  • 1/4 cup of buttermilk (can be made with powdered and water)
  • 1 tsp of raw local honey
  • 1/2 tsp of black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp of sea salt
  • 1/2 tsp of keen hot mustard
  • 1 to 2 tbsp of fresh grated horseradish root
  • six to eight fresh mint leaves very finely chopped.

Makes about a cup of dressing, its rich tasting and full bodied, it works in a cabbage salad but its awesome for dipping spicy little peices of lamb cubes but it also is excellent over hot mash potatos.

So girls how did your food storage week go?

Posted in Food Storage | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Chicken Power in the garden

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

Chicken Cruiser, Mobile Chicken Coop, Chicken Tractor, or Chicken Ark in our neck of the woods, the names all mean the samething in general, a moveable pen where your chickens get to be both confined(aka Safe) and yet have a fresh feast available to them in the form of greens, bugs, slugs, worms and many more, while giving them excerise/fresh air and meeting all their natural chicken urges all in one.

Now when most folks talk about a chicken tractor in my area, its one of the bigger “eco” chicken farmers that have 50 to 100 chickens in a huge flat trailer that gets moved around with the tractor or truck,  with batches coming and going between eight to twelve weeks and the going rate for those pasture raised birds locally are around 5 dollars per pd of dressed out birds, in a way its a best of both worlds, the produces get all the safety for the birds, and the much! higher income, and the buyers get the health benafits of the birds being on pasture while still getting O so tender confined chicken meat with more flavor..

Now a Ark or Cruiser is different then the tractor in two main ways,

a) Size, the typical Cruiser holds half a dozen to a dozen birds at a time, a Ark hold 4 to 6 birds typically, and they are movable by one person with a little work and fairly easily by two peaple.

b) They still give alot of the bonus’s listed above but they are used in the garden for the purpose of weed and pest control but also as tillers, being allowed to bring the garden patch right down to bare soil, where if you throw in some half done compost, they will also work it in for you.

Now most Cruisers or Arks on the small side typically are 8 feet long by 4 feet wide by 2 feet high give or take, however do you think I could get that thought though to my Dh?

Because we do have a issue with fox’s mainly, he was not about to build me a nice lightweight ark, so he layed out the materials needed to make the 8 foot by 4 foot and then asked me to pick it up and haul it, he won.. so instead I am getting a couple mini arks tailored for our garden, he also did not want to redo the size of our beds from 3 feet to 4 feet, so our arks are 4 feet long, 3 feet wide and just over 2 feet high, It has a solid two peice roof, a wire front for air and light, and three solid sides, with the open bottom for eating and tilling, I’m not so worried about anyone digging down to get in, but if we ever see signs that is happening or have loss, I will add a hot wire with a 9 volt charger to the outside.

This also allows me to keep back my older good broody hens, that are not as heavy of a egg layer any more, not only do they earn their keep by being broody hens, but they also earn their keep with much reduced feed costs by being chicken tillers.

I would love to go out and take a picture of my finished mini Chicken Ark but its been raining since I woke up but I will do a second post to show the before and after and how its going in the garden with the girls at work.

 

Posted in Critters, gardens | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Hanging out with Mr. Mitten Kitten.

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

We spent some time outside today building a mini chicken ark for using chicken power in the garden and Mr. Mitten decided be the supervisor of the project.

Posted in Critters | 9 Comments

Fall Shoulder Lamb Chop Stew

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

When getting half or whole lamb you will end up with a number of 1 pd cuts of shoulder chops, these are heavier on bone then lamb chops are. Now the price of chops in the store are high but again the shoulder chop is much more reasonable.

This recipe is going to breakdown into two main parts

Part one

One package of Lamb Shoulder Chops, in our packages that means six chops, half a white onion finely chopped, 4 dried aprociots finely diced, one 8 oz jar of canned Aprociots fruit or about 6 oz of Apricot jam mixed with half a cup of water, 2 large dried candied Ginger peices or 1 tsp of dried Ginger powder and into the crock pot to simmer away for 4 plus hours till the meat is fall off the bone tender.. Don`t cut the meat off the bone, it is going to add depth of flavor to your sauce.

Now at this point Pull the meat off the bone, and put it back into the sauce, if you want it thicker, you can use a little corn starch to thicken it up (following the directions on the box), you can serve it as is with side dishes, you can serve it over rice.

Or you can take it into stew form as shown above, I added in 2 cups of pea`s, two cups of small diced potato`s, one shredded carrot, and a handful of diced fresh fall spinach, fresh mushrooms would be good as well (but I am waiting for my next crop to grow)

This will give us a light delightful slightly sweet stew, I would recommend saving one or two little potato peices to smush up and get the last of the juice up..

Posted in Lamb Recipes | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Fluff and Feathers..

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Just another day on the farm

A new clutch of ducklings, with a second hen still sitting on her nest.. total little fluffy tikes..

Remember these little guys..

Guess who just turned one month old and are ready for their move into the little barn

Here is one of the big meat boys, he is already big enough that if I really wanted cornish Game birds for dinner, he is ready for the stew pot, but I will let him grow for another 8 weeks or so, none the less I am very impressed with the weight gain and overall health of this mixed breed.

Here is his female counterpart, they are growing very well, but just oose hen to me, and such a ladylike hen to boot, they have such a good temperment, I can see that they will if healthy end up being layers, nice big large brown eggs

Here is one of the purebred Bard Rock hens, they are averaging half a pd less then the red hens above but they are growing well for their breed and are very interested in all that their world, they are as quiet but a little more reserved then the red girls, who just want to be your friend.

An then there are the clowns, silly little critters, as friendly as can be, interested in everythign and always happy and singing when they see you, they are growing nicely, with no signs of feet/leg issues always just what you want to see..

I got asked by a reader when I would move them out, and I had never really tracked it, but the answer would appear to be four weeks seemed to be when they were all ready to be moved..

Posted in Critters | Tagged , , | 2 Comments