Just another Day on the Farm

Sour Dill Rye Bread Recipe

Posted on December 13, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

Ok, so this is a different bread recipe, but I challange you to give it a try, its so good and nothing! like you are going to find in a store.

This recipe is based out of the one in Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads but like normal, I have tweeked it abit. Makes two loaves.

2 Cups of Flour, 2 TBS of Old Fashion Yeast, 1 Cup of homemade or store bought Dill Pickle Juice, and 3/4 cup warm water, bet together.

Then add 2 TBS of Olive Oil, 2 TBS of Honey or Sugar, One Large Duck egg at room temp or two large chicken eggs. 1 tsp Sea Salt, 1 TBS Dried Dillweed, 1 TBS of Caraway Seeds, Beat into the first batter very well.

Then add 1 an half cups of Rye bread, Mix well, adding just enough white flour to get your proper smooth ball of dough, it changes depending on the size of the eggs, but typically between one and one half cups more flour..

Kneed till smooth, then cover and let rest for 30 min, this is needed to let the rye flour relax.. then shape them into two loaves and let them rise till double. Takes about an hour or so

Preheat the oven to 375, then slash the top of each into a tic-tac-toe pattern and bake in the oven till the loaves are crisp and hard, about 50 min or so.. Check your bread by tapping the bottom, need to have a hollow sound, and bake for a few min extra if required.

Cool on a metal rack, if you want a chewy crust, brush with water while the bread is still hot and just out of the oven..

Now if you like Ruben’s that will knock your socks off, Given them a try with this Rye Bread, picture a homer going..ahhhhhhggggggg with drool coming out of one side of mouth LOL

Two slices of Sour Dill Rye Bread toasted or grilled with butter on the outsides, Montreal smoked meat or baked corn beef, sliced thin, with just a touch of homemade hot mustard, Swiss Cheese and if you like it tradional -a bit of fried sauerkraut. The next time I make one, I will add the picture to this post.

Mung Bean Sprouts and Recipe..

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

Dried Mung Beans can be turned into wonderful home grown sprouts for use in a number of tasty dishes, I started sprouting about ten years ago as a way to be able to offer the hounds fresh ground greens once or twice a week in their diets thoughout the winter and slowly have started using them for both the hounds and the humans of the house.

Take the beans, an wash them, then fill a jar with cold water and let sit overnight, then drain the water out and place the jar in a cool dark cupboard, each day for three to five days fill your jar with fresh cold water, swirl around, an drain and then back into the cupboard, I never get those big huge white 3 inch sprouts they sell in the store, I get about an inch to an inch and half long with a lovely sweetan slightly nutty crunch.

Ready for use, these are just at the start stage, I will use them up over the while, most likely grinding them to add to the monday bread making recipe.

However if you are looking for a nice way to serve them as a side veggie, give this one a try.

Two cups fresh mung bean sprouts
One onion -Peeled and Diced-browned
One Clove Garlic-Peeled and Diced-browned
One large Mushroom-Diced and browned
Butter, Salt, Pepper, Soy Sauce, Brown Suger, an Red Wine to make a little sauce.

Posted in 100 mile diet, food, Food Production and Recipes, frugal, local food | Tagged 100 mile food challange, Food Production and Recipes | 1 Comment

Ice Ice Baby

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

They say the worst is yet to come..

Posted in farm | Leave a comment

Someone likes her hay..

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

bet you thought it would be a sheep, cow or rabbit? Nope, its Miss Piggy..

Who likes her handful of green hay given daily, she gets very excited when she finds a good bit, she is growing well, and the cold does not bother her, she just goes in her nice deep three foot bed of straw, you can’t even see her, just that the bedding moves sometimes.

Posted in Critters, farm, Pigs | Tagged pigs | Leave a comment

How do you know its freezing Rain?

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

Check out that frosting on the back of the sheep, who have been out having their breakfast at the hay bales..Got to love that the hair sheep grow wool for the winter, if you dug your fingers into her coat, she is dry and warm despite that icy topping..

It turned into nasty hail during morning chores..we are doing the required chores for a power outage, as often happened with ice storms.

Posted in Critters, farm, sheep | Tagged sheep | Leave a comment

Milk Replacer for Calves

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

Girl coming along, I got her at three weeks of age and had her about 3 weeks at the time of this photo, she had filled out quite a bit by this photo, going from two milk feedings a day to four helped steady her down.

While the wind howls and the freezing rain pelts the farm and coats the windows to the point that only grey defused light is coming in this morning, I am thinking about Milk Replacers..

You see I was at the feed store, getting another bag of replacer for girl, who if she lived in a typical barn would in fact be weaned now but I am giving her some extra months on the milk to hopefully give her the best start to her life as possable..

So normally I get the owner and “old guy” at the store that my Hay guy and breeder of Girl recommended that I use for the best results.. but this time, I got a young man, who said yes to the milk replacer and then asked me which of the two I would like.. the 20/16 or the 20/18, of which I did not want, I wanted what my girl has been on since the beginning, which is 24/18.. Turns out you need to use the key word Replacement Calf, not just milk replacer and top of the line to get your hands on that one..

The reason.. cost, the 20/16 costs 40 dollars for a 20 kg bag (or about 40 pds for those that don’t do Kg), the 20/18 will cost you another ten dollars for the same size bag but what my darling Girl is on, will cost you almost 70 dollars a bag for the same size.

Now as a interesting note my cow book says and I qoute ” The National research council recommends using a milk replacer with a minimun of 22 percent protein and ten percent fat, but calves will do better if the milk replacer contains 15 to 20 percent fat, they will grow faster and be less apt to get scours from inadequate nutrition”

I find this statement a bit of a huh, so why would anyone make or sell a product that point in fact would cause inadequate nutrition in a animal, there can only be one real answer to that, because someone somewhere does not care about their critters! Do I need to even say, what they would be concerned about instead.. the amighty buck comes to mind.

It also goes on to say, that you should be careful to read your bags to see if you are getting milk based or vegetable based proteins..

This one was a eye popping one as well, because on those cheaper bags, at least five to eigth percent of the protein listed is vegetable based, I’m sorry but as a baby, it needs milk proteins.

It could be said that I am paying 30 dollars more for being able to give her milk, and in that case, so be it. A couple other things of note, my Feed guy had been selling me a matching starter, and it was working well, asked for and got a new bag of starter and within two weeks noticed that Girl didn’t seem quite as good, not bad in any way but not glowing either, checked her feed and it was close but quite right, they gave me a different starter (the cheap kind to go with the cheap milk for the butcher calfs) so went right back and got the replacement starter and within a week, it was doing it’s job correctly.

Talked to my hay guy and he has changed the hay I get normally for the sheep from one field to a different field for Girl, the sheep seem to love the hay and are doing really well on it but I found out that my hay guy tests his hay and then does his best to make sure his customers get the ones they need for their critters, I remember him asking me about the needs for sheep and goats when we moved here and started buying from him and he would always ask each spring, how did birthing go etc etc..

Now I know why, he never said why, but when I said, Girl does not like the sheep’s hay, he went.. yup, will send the boy down with hay for the calf, well, the sheep like the calf’s hay but so does Girl, she is eating around ten pds plus already and drinking 8 liters of water at time. I need to measure her but I would say well over 300 pds if I had to take a guess..

I am truly hopeful that the extra care shown now will have lasting results in regards to her life span as a family milk cow..

Posted in Critters, farm, raw milk | Tagged Family Milk Cow | 5 Comments

Butternut sqaush pasta recipe

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

One and half cup Flour, one fresh egg, 1/4 cup roasted butternut Squash, a pinch of Salt.

Mix together and knead into a ball, let rest for at least 15 min and then put though your pasta machine or roll out thin and slice with a pizza cutter.

Here is the pasta going though the rollers that will make it nice and thin, I start at level seven and normal for pasta go to number 4, the machine will go right down to super thin at number 1 but we have tried different thickness and we like 4 best.

Nice Narrrow Spaghetti Strands showing the resting ball of dough yet to be done..

Here is our lovely Linguini resting drapped over the bowl while it dries a little before going into the boiling water for supper. Sauce was homemade pasta sauce with diced lamb patties mixed in.

Posted in food, Food Production and Recipes, frugal | Tagged 100 mile food challange, Chickens, Farm Fresh Eggs, Food Production and Recipes, Frugal | 4 Comments

Salt Cured Leg of Lamb

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

or a kind of “prosciutto d’agnello”.

I took two legs of lamb with bone in about a eight pd approx, and made a brine of salt in gallon of water, I added salt till an egg would float, and then I put the legs of lamb in the brine in a crock and covered with a wooden float top that was weigh down with a well scrub rock that I tend to use for that crock.

It took three weeks, they said, roughly 2 days per pd of meat per leg but it took alittle long, perhaps because it was bone in? Where they said to debone the lamb leg for ease of cutting afterwards. The longer you leave it in, the larger and stronger your salted rind is likely to be.

Then I gave it a good rinse, an wrapped it in cheesecloth to protect it from flies and hung it to dry for a week, then moved them to a area in the cellar and placed in a wire basket, to allow for even airflow around the legs.

The recipe called for it to be ready in three months, it will be very dry, and you must like lamb as it will have a very stong flavor, typically served sliced very thin, it can be used in pea soup in replacement for salt pork, it can be used in tiny slivers like bacon, it can be used in dips to replace bacon, just dice very tiny and fine as a very little goes a long way.

I am very glad that I took the time to do this, as it gives me a very different an wonderful product to be included in my DDC recipes.

This is amazing, just think this meat is so beautifully preserved months later, the art of how our forefathers figured out how to keep food is becoming a lost art..

Posted in 100 mile diet, Food Production and Recipes, sheep, Winter Eating Challange | Tagged Food Production and Recipes, sheep | 9 Comments

Homemade Bread

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

At least once a week, I make bread for the farm, I don’t tend to make one loaf at a time. More like two to six depending on the recipe.. Its a never ending change on what will end up on the table, I like to try breads and quick breads from all cultures across the world.

Dear Hubby tends to laugh at the fact that often (perhaps to often) I don’t use recipes, I just start making something, including bread and then work till its right.. as an example, I tend to like to add whole milk and fresh eggs to alot of my breads, its a way to use the daily products of the farm and to make the breads more healthy, I have my own sour dough culture that I keep going, but also use yeast when I feel like it.

So it came as a suprise to DH when at the book store I feel in love with a book and just had to add it to my large cookbook collection, I have at least 200 plus and counting cookbooks, its a hand me down trait from my Momma, she must have hundreds and hundreds of cookbooks, thankful to me, I often get copies of her best ones sent to me thoughout the year, so its not like I was without a bread making book.

Having said that my favorite bread book, is Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads, the 30th Anniversary Edition., it covered the globe for different breads and it includes the full instructions for a homemade bread oven, something I will make and use at some point in the future.

There is a point to me making my bread at home (beyond just liking the fresh taste of bread) and that is being able to control what is in our bread, have you looked at the store bread and seen what is in it.. half the time I can’t even figure out the names for at least half of the stuff listed..

Now to be fair, we do have some local bakery’s that now offfer a few breads that are made with a list that I can read, understand and agree that its bread and they make and bake it on site, raither then the very sneaky wording often used that says, home baked, raither then homemade, which of course means it comes in frozen in box’s and then is proofed at the store and baked off and sold as “fresh” Bla, I think not!

However then comes the price for the real stuff, which is enough to knock you off your feet, it ranges from four to eight dollars locally and that for one loaf, I am grateful that for the peaple who shop raither then bake that they do have this choice but the cost is far to high for me..

Now I might be willing to pay that if I knew that the wheat was local and hand ground etc but not for a bread that is made of white flour, sea salt, yeast and fresh spring water..

I am currently on the hunt for a more local source of grains, and have been pleased to find a couple different sources

http://ovgp.ca/index.php

http://mountainpath.com/

http://www.cog.ca/chapters/ottawa/ottawa-organic-directory/

Posted in Food Production and Recipes, frugal | 1 Comment

Weigh in Week 43/10

Posted on December 9, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

Well, my weight in was not good this week, according to my scale I am up 3 an half pds, which does not make a lot of sense to me, unless of course I have a ‘Friend” coming right shortly to visit, as I tend always to appear to gain at that time.

Goals for the past week.

No eating after nine this week for five days a week, tuesday and thursdays off on this. -6 out 7 yes.
Food Journel- Work to keep it at 1800 hundred as close as possable. -between 1600 to 2000 so yes overall
Work on core strength this week. -Yes, three 15 min workouts, plus two days of total farm chores workouts.

My goals for this coming week are

Keep my food journel and stay at or below 2000 per day.
Workout at least three times this week
Walk at least three times this week
Weights 2 times this week
Do my stretch exercies daily
Dress up a little when I go out on my twice weekly off the farm time

The down of the week is that my big winter coat is to big now, and my handdown coat is still to small and the ones that do fit are not warm enough, which becomes moot once I am working but I am freezing till I get the core body temp up and sweating.

Highs of the week, Finally one day of sunshine, working towards a goal of being a healthier person, finishing more knitting projects, and working each day towards getting that list of to do things smaller! Cat head butts and hound wiggle worms in a warm bed.