Just another Day on the Farm

Long Day..

Posted on November 17, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

Well, it was a long day yesterday, was up at 4:30 in order to get the chores done to be out the door for 7 to be at Nat’s by eight, then drove to the art school, for morning rush hour in the capital, it was not bad, after spending a driving trip across Canada, its safe to say that Nat and I have a rythem when it comes to giving and taking directions.

The school itself was nice, other then it did seem like everyone speaks a different lang then me, but I have now lived a number of years, where English if spoken is the second lang of most of the folks around me, so it was just part of the norm..

The room was huge and messy, so cleaning and creating order was the first part required and then we set up about 50 peices of different artwork, in different displays.. the tunes were on, and it took us the whole two and half hours to just get it done before the prof showed up to judge the artwork to see if Nat would be able to prove that she didn’t need to take a course and would get credit in her program..

I headed off to knit in the main lobby and to peaple watch, Learned three main things in that time.

Leather boots with very high tiny spike heels are clearly in this year, I can not tell you how many ladies clicked by in boots that have to be destorying their feet in the name of fashion.
That compared to when I went to collage, everyone seemed to be dress like they all worked at Gap or something, this surprised me to be honest, you would think if you are at a Art school, you would think that the artists would express themselves in their outward choices a little more.
Now given that we are basicly at the capital city, and we do have a very good cultural mix in the city and that this school does bring folks from across canada, I was surprised at how many different cultural backgrounds were at the school.. Clearly art crosses all boundries in this regard.

The good news is that it was all worth it, as credit was given, It took an hour to break it all down and pack it away, and other hour and half of driving to get me back to the farm in mid afternoon, The critters were all VERY happy to see me.. the radio was telling me that a heavy rain storm was pending.. so chores took me another three hours, including hauling the last 200 pds of loose hay to the barn, as I have moved the big tarp to the new big hay bales, and didn’t want this to get ruined.. (which turned out to be a good thing, as it did drop a ton of rain and everything is soaked the bone this morning)

By then, I was ready to drop into bed but needed supper first.. eating something that for me would be considered very fast food indeed.. A bowl of red rice, mixed with my leftover shimp sauce, and a little sprinkle of mozza to make a hot carb filled tasty stringy dinner..

Posted in Life moves on daily | 1 Comment

Cabbage Salad Recipe

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

Half a Cabbage Head, chopped
One bell pepper-Seeded/chopped
One carrot-Diced Fine
Half a cup raw pumkin seeds
1/4 cup dried sweetened cranberries

Then for the dressing,

1/4 cup Rubarb Relish
1 Heaping TPS Homemade Mayo

I know that this seems a little strange but honest, its very good.. given it a try if you are looking for something a little different in regards to your side cabbage salad.

Posted in Food Production and Recipes | 1 Comment

mornin..

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

Well, the perk of being up at 4:30 am is that you get to listen to BBC for an hour an half, I really like to hear news from England and Europe, often times they cover so many different things then our local news do.

Thank goodness for a fresh mug of tea in the morning, have weaned myself off the suger and milk in regards to tea but still need a bit of raw local honey to really enjoy it.. Always find it funny that the critters get both mine and hubbies first stumbling work.. swirling critters doing their very best to tell us that they would like fresh water in the bowl, the food dishes filled, or in the hounds case.. Outside??? mom.. breakfast?? Mom… Outside again please.. You know you have got it all done, when silence comes back..

Hounds got a treat this morning of a little frozen lamb chop bone, I cut off all the lamb to make the world best stew, and then layed out the bones and froze them, as it always takes a little long for the dogs to chew them that way.. given the happy grunts, and the settling after the chew, I would say, it was hit.. most of the time, they get fresh apple or carrots as their chews after breakfast..

So hubby gave a call last night, and has arrived at his first stop safe and sound, his hotel is a little odd.. his room is in a second building about a block an half or so front the main hotel with the check in desk, and he had a problem with the door lock on the first room he was given, so he had to walk back and forth a couple of times, including with someone from the hotel as they could not get the door to open, finally cleaned and gave him a different room..

Got to love the northern airlines food, he got to choose between Char or Duck for lunch.. Love it! Said he went for duck but that it was like bland pork compared to our rich flavor filled home grown duck..

Sounds like he got a couple new interesting books at the airport, one is on how canadian’s think, basic idea is that they took polls information for the past xx years and then built a book around them to show differences an interesting things in regards to parts of canada. He says its heavy but interesting.

The second one about tomato’s and he thinks I will really enjoy it, its about the history of tomato’s and breeding them..as I do like to keep seed, this book does indeed sound like it will be something I will be devouring when he gets home.

Speaking of eating, my little flock of growing chicks are eating me out of house and home, when they were little, they needed one bowl of feed twice a day.. then they moved up to two dishes twice a day.. and then two bigger dishes.. still they were hungry when I would go for the next feeding, I like my critters to be happy to see me coming but it was more then that.. So I went to the brown shed and dug out another chicken auto feeder, that I got at a farm sale a couple years back.. Hah.. just went to check on them.. sassy quiet birds greeted me.. instead of MOM!! Food, Food..eeppp, eeppp. Only another month till most of those pretty roo’s go to freezer camp.. The little girls should start laying in late Jan/Feb, and I will be making lots of pasta. I am pleased with everyone’s growth and will enjoy having new young layers to add to my current flock, equally like that this breed will go broody.

Total change of topic, I just heard the strangest thing on the news, and I have to share..it would appear that there is a dealership in the United States that is offering a AK47 free when you buy one of their trucks..They say that their sales have doubled since the offer has started and as a side note.. if you already have this rifle, you can pick a different one..

Now its totally common to have our vehicle dealerships to offer “extra’s” to try and get folks to pick them to buy from, but this one was a HUH… I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the owners of this business, decided that this would be a good idea, and I would like to know where this dealership is?? If they are selling trucks, it would seem that the odds are good it should be farming land, and yet the choice does not strike me as something a hunter would find appealing.. Well, maybe I will hear a follow up on this, if so I will share..

Posted in Family, Life moves on daily | Tagged Chickens, Chores | Leave a comment

Horseradish Round Two

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

https://livingmydreamlifeonthefarm.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/horseradish/

Here is the link to the first Horseradish post, I am not going to repeat the basic’s here as they are all there..

One of my mini-Goals was to dig out and process my larger second patch of horseradish, and that’s just what I have been doing, I have finished harvesting, and replanted next years crop to be. I tried this batch with white wine vinager.

Also cooked up some shimps this morning, put their shell’s into a pot of water and simmered for ten min, then took them out and used the shimp water to make rice in..

Then took my shimp and nibbled on them with my fresh Cocktail sauce.. Here is the recipe

3/4 cup my homemade Chili sauce ( will post that recipe after)
2 Tbsp Lemon Juice
1 Tbsp Fresh Horseradish

This is just wonderful but it has quite a flavor bust in your mouth.. Nothing like store bought..

Chili Sauce

8 cups fresh chopped tomatoes, Peeled/cored
3 large onions chopped
3 Large Green and Red Peppers -seeded and chopped
1 cup white vinegar
1 cup dark brown suger
1 clove garlic -finely chopped
1 tsp spices, celery salt, Mustard Seeds, Salt, Allspice, Cinnamon, Cloves.

Cook till thick (should mound on the spoon when checked), and place in clean hot jars and water bath process them for 20 min.

Posted in Food Production and Recipes, gardens | Tagged Canning, Food Production and Recipes, Frugal, Garden | 1 Comment

Up and Away..

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

Dear Hubby will be in three provinces and all three territories on this trip.. Here is all the flags of Canada, he will be in Ontario, Alberta, B.C. Nunavut, NWT, and the Yukon..

Can you match the correct flag to each place he will visit?? The flags are 1 though 14, going left to right..

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged Trips | Leave a comment

Things we take for Granted

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada.. a beautful but barren place at a times

I truly adore the fact that most of the time, you can just walk into a store and get darn near anything you could want and most of the time a few hundred things you don’t really want or need..

However in the past year, I have been a bit surprised at finding some things in short supply, the first one that really hit my radar was lemon Juice.. Now I know that it might seem like a odd thing to notice but it turns out that most lemon’s are sold for fresh use, and only ten percent or so of lemons go to make Lemon Juice..

well in 2008 they had a very bad crop,or so it said on google when I read up on it. It was because of a freeze that ruined a good percent of the crops, now how this was figured out is that a ton of canning recipes ask for you to use Lemon Juice, and not the fresh ones because they don’t have the same ability to have a set acid level..

Store after Store after Store, sold out, and with little hand written notes saying they didn’t have any in back and it was back ordered.. We lucked out, and found a small store at one of the little villages that had six bottles and I snapped them all up, but even so, I had to play with using vinager’s in certain recipes that year to make up the loss.. and got me to thinking.. how would I replace that acid in my recipes if needed to do so.. Vinagers appear to be the answer, but I will straight up say, they effect the overall flavors of the canned goods, I am not meaning they are bad, just that they come out different.

Last Christmas, the one that we hunted store after store was Filburts aka Hazenuts, we wanted raw nuts, salted or unsalted would be fine.. we could find them in products but not the nut itself.. it was odd.. Even some of the bags of nuts where missing them.. google to the rescue.. turns out that about 90 percent of all hazenuts in N.A. are all processed at the same plant, and they had a massive outbreak that caused the nuts to be contaminated, and the whole place and season shut down..WOW.. Anyone think maybe just maybe that you should not have ‘All your nuts in the same basket” Haha.. couldn’t resist that line.. sorry.

This year it was pickling cucumbers, my own crop was so-so, good enough but I wanted to process more, so I started watching local farmers markets and the local stores, who are surprisingly good about normally have fresh produces from our province.. lots of english cucumbers but no pickling.. finally start asking everywhere I go.. nope, nope, nope.. failure of crops. So its no surprise to me that the cost of pickles in the stores have gone up.. I have been tracking it locally, the general overall cost of the same jar of pickles last year is 60 cents higher.

Wonder if those prices will come down next year if we have a bumper crop of pickle cucumbers but somehow I doubt it..

Posted in frugal | Tagged Frugal, photography | 1 Comment

Honey Do List

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

My sweetheart is off on for a bit in regards to a work trip..

So I am setting a few extra goals on my honey do list while he is gone. These are above an beyond my normal chores

Make Girls first Harness and work on her oxen training
Move the bush pile that is by the duck pens back to no man land, even if its only one wheel barrol load per day
Dig and process the second bigger patch of horseradish
Make bath bombs and bath salts for Gifts
Paint the little bedroom
Take off the old bathroom door and replace it with the new one, and then paint it.
Help a friend out in setting up her art display
Finish my mom’s knitting project
Make my christmas log

That’s it for now, I will add to the list as things progess and we will see what all I can get done.. It’s amazing to me, how much work I can sometimes get done when I am home alone on the farm.. will keep you posted and share photos.. Want to lay down bets on if I can get it done?

Posted in Goals, Life moves on daily | Tagged Chores, crafts, Farm Life, Goals | Leave a comment

I Love my Chainsaw!

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

I adore that my dear hubby know that the Chainsaw is a ME job, and that he lets me take the lead.. that was a good two hours well worked.. We had three tree’s that had grown up over the past couple years, and we liked them, but they were getting close to the size and height that we were going to start having them be a problem in a icestorm on our powerline from the house to the big barn.. so we just took them down in peices, cut the trunks up into moveable peices by either of us and hauled the rest of the tree’s down to the no-man’s land to rot out with time as we build land there.. Great workout for both of us and I am totally ready for a glass of wine..

Posted in Life moves on daily | Tagged Chores | Leave a comment

Pretty Girl

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

Don’t you just love those eyelash’s…

Posted in Critters | Tagged Family Milk Cow | 1 Comment

Artist’s Conk “Gandoerma applanatum”

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Just another day on the farm

Just back from a stromp in our local woods, of course a four foot furry friend came with, as we went looking for a young small birch tree to be turned into little medal’s of wood for some craft projects I have planned.. No real luck today, everything was to big, to small, o well , it still a great time out in the woods, a nice walk and look what we found in a big old stand of deadwood..

There is scientific evidence developing that indicates that this mushroom has antibacterial properties, however its common use is by artist who use these mushroom’s when fresh to etch designs on and use dried specimens as canvases to paint landscapes or other design’s on.. Provided you cut the base properly, these wonderful rendering are self standing..

They can range in size from four to twenty four inches across and come in both fan shaped and more rounded shapes. Each one is different in its bumps, cracks and lines.. I was lucky enough to find a double growth one today that will allow me to create either a extra depth to the artwork or a two scene peice. I was able to my surprise in the walk in the woods to find a patch of this mushroom with a really dark palette.. and the time of year.. just a lovely color.. as most of the one’s I am able to find are whiter on the undersides.. but I remember finding this color up in NWT and northern Alberta.. I will post a few finished results at a later date..