Spring Rabbit Update

Posted on May 4, 2017 by Just another day on the farm

Well, its kind of quiet on the quarterly rabbit report for 2017.. the three new does are now out of quarantine as is the new buck.

So the three new girls have all just been breed, so we should have a major boom in baby rabbit kits end of may, first week of June

My oldest and biggest girl had the winter off and I was concerned that she was not breeding again.. I had breed her three times and nothing! I figured I would sadly need to replace her with one of the younger girls.. but as she is a totally awesome mom, I decided to try her with a new buck

She made a nest big enough to hold her normal 8 to 12 kits.. I coo’d to her and carefully opened the nest up and smiled at the fat bellied babies..

all 2 of them LOL  She was re-bred right back and hopefully she will have a proper sized litter for her age on the next one.. none the less she showed me something important. I was going to cull the other older doe as well because she was not breeding (she is huge an I am waiting for hair pulling and kits) but if she does not go this week, I am going to put her with the new buck as well and give her one more kick at the can as they say.

The old buck though, he is going to freezer camp, because it would appear that despite him being in a good health and a very active breeder, I think he is the reason for no new kits.

Which means that my prime breeder buck this year is a  Champion (bred for meat) Solid Black Purebred Black New Zealand imported from Florida by a friend of mine. She changed her mind on what she wanted to do for crossing for her meat rabbits and offered him to me.

He is smaller then my wonderful Grimaud Frère / Hypharm in France bred does from the local Lapin Rabbity so I expect what I would ideally like to do is find my best growing buck from the cross and hold him back for a future breeder as he would be totally unrelated to all my new girls

I will be building a few new rabbit grow out pens this spring, most likely two more of my 16 square foot hutches, but split them into two sides at 8 square feet floor space. We will see..

 

 

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Fresh Nettle Pasta – Made with Duck Eggs

Posted on May 2, 2017 by Just another day on the farm

2 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, 1/4 cup of dried Crumbled Nettle, 1 and half tbsp water, 3 duck eggs, kneed it all together and then let it rest at least 30 min with a damp tea towel over it, Split it into four balls, covering the one’s not in use and flour and roll out each one to your desired thickness.

If you want proper pasta thinness, roll it thin or use the pasta machine, I have one and I can make it nice and thin but I promised hubby that I would do the thicker hand rolled kind.. For this roller if you roll the dough till its thin enough that it will cut it to the bottom, you will have pretty standard type noodles

I used half the pasta dough for noodles and half to make Butternut Squash Ravioli.. The Noodles is going in a Alfredo sauce and the Butternut Nettle Ravioli will be done in a browned butter with Green onions.

 

 

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Rhubarb Cake Recipe – Spring Rhubarb and Ginger

Posted on May 1, 2017 by Just another day on the farm

                                                               Happy May Day!

It was fitting that in the cold bitter spring rain, I headed out with a knife in one hand and poking though my 30 rhubarb plants, I took the biggest stalk off 8 of them (worth noting they were all Canada Ruby Reds, being much further along then the German Pie or the “unknown farmstead” or Farmgal’s trial rhubarb #1 though #5)

My Fingers were numb by the time I had gathered fresh mint and Nettles for a tea, rhubarb and Cut a head of Dandelion and a small bunch of green onions, and the wet was working its way past my collar and dripping down my neck despite the hat.

SO! Worth it! 2 cups of Fresh Spring Ontario Rhubarb was coarsely diced up.

Rhubarb Cake Recipe #2

  • Half a cup of Butter or Lard
  • 3/4th cup of sugar
  • 2 duck eggs or 3 large chicken eggs
  • 1 cup of sheep milk or whole milk
  • 2 cups diced rhubarb
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 tbsp. of Baking Soda
  • 1 tbsp. of dried ginger
  • 1/2 tsp of All spice
  • 1/2 tsp of salt

This is a smaller cake, it made a thinner cake in a 9 by 12 cake pan and would have made a thicker one in a square 8 by 8.. Baked at 350 for 40 min, till knife came out clean.

If you want to put a little buttercream icing on it.. it will be just a bit of extra treat to go with it! I cut it while till warm and I just iced only that piece, the cake itself is not very sweet and with the bits of tart rhubarb with a gentle after taste of the spices.. its just right on its own, but if you want a bit more sweetness.. the icing gets you there 🙂

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April Farm Overview- Tracking Year Stats

Posted on May 1, 2017 by Just another day on the farm

Ok, I am wanting to track this down for this coming year..  April has been nicely wet, cooler weather for the first two weeks of the month, more common weather on the third week and even a hot day on the last week..

April has seen growth in the gardens, and some wild forage which is wonderful, its been a working month in many ways on the farm..

Costs for April 2017
Hay-$400.00
Feed- $126
Straw- 16

Farm Output- Personal use only but local costs to replace if bought off the farm

  • Eggs: 7 dozen  at 5 per dozen as eating eggs- $35 dollars
  • Duck Eggs 9Dozen- 72 dollars
  • Sheep Milk- 32 liter -(Moving the milk price to the same as the lady down the road that sells it at 8 dollars per liter)-256
    Manure: Finished composting down.. at least 50 dollars worth of compost produced this month.- $50
    2 new lambs (current market value per lamb 100 as bottle babies Price dropped down since last month. -200
  • Lambs info (* for later in the year, I Will adjust the price to reflect the butcher, the return and sale price sale, but for this month, lets stay with if I sold them as a bottle baby this month)
  • 17 chicks – While I am now seeing 5 dollar mix breed chicks locally (as within an hour of me) I am staying with the returns that I said in my chick overview – 269

Farm loss’s in Feb

  • 1 chick -15

Farm extra’s Costs

  • Roof- ( I am not sure on this one, its house repair work) the house is both part of and not part of the farm..  for now, I am leaving it blank on this.

Farm extra’s..
hardware – 100 (wood costs for the shelving for the greenhouse area)
Ferrier – 150 (trims and Caleb shoes)
Vet- 0

Garden Overview April

Total Garden Costs -$ 41.60
Total Garden Return – $203.90

Total Out cost for Jan on for the farm -$ 792 output cash costs

Farm impute Value – 1070.90

Total output of the farm in returns

  • Jan – In the hole –1,029
  • Feb – In the Hole –1,429
  • March-On the good side -$ 1,038
  • April -On the good side -$279

Yearly total Minus- 1,141

Goals- No selling of anything off the farm is planned, the saving costs are what we would have to pay if we bought in the local free market to replace what the farm produces that improves our lives.

Its a tracking year..

and also I have had and seen a number of comments many times of folks saying, my 5 acres and under homestead needs to pay for itself.. well, I like to think mine does, I like to think that a well-run homestead can do just that! So lets see if I am right or not?

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April Garden Overview -2017 Tracking Year Data

Posted on May 1, 2017 by Just another day on the farm

Hello Folks, I am going to do my best heading into 2017 to have a big old tracking year, I need to do this and I have the book, the paperwork and the plan..  I will make it happen..

So this is the first month of scales, daily writing of what is coming in.. O the fun.. (not) lol.. but if I can get into a daily habit, it will prove to be much easier.  I think that I will need to get my own little second book for this, its proving at times to take to much room in my current recording book.

April  Costs- 41.60

Output Costs: 41.60

An so it starts..  While I do have a soaping scale, I am going to round things into pounds or fractions of pounds just like I took everything into pints, regardless of the jar size itself..  so it can be a quarter of a pound, half a pound, a pound an so forth.  Yes, I know I am Canadian but I was raised with gallons and pounds, I am the crossover gen and it never stuck any more then it needed to.. give me feet, pounds and inches!

Started in April  A ton of garden seedlings and flowers, I am so rounding this one out for the sake of my fingers and typing.. Needless to say.. I have planted out

  • -7 trays at 72 cells -504 seeds started
  • 3 trays with 24 cells -72 seeds started
  • 2 trays with 12 cells -24 seeds started
  • 5 elderberry cut starts branches
  • 5 High Bush cranberry Starts
  • 6 yellow raspberry cane starts

The real question is how? do I figure out returns on this and I have decided that until its planted in my garden or harvested and eaten.. its just sitting there and growing.. but not cost counted.

Outside, in April, we planted two 15 foot rows of sugar snap peas (that are already up) and 30 feet of regular early harvest short season pea’s (also up) 30 feet of broad Beans (they are also up), I have a 4 by 4 foot patch of self-seeded lettuce up, I have a 2 by 3 foot patch of self-seeded docks coming and I have about a 2 by 8 foot of self-seeded radish’s that are coming up.

Harvested in April (all dried herbs and such will go with Mountain Rose Herb costs per their site)

3 pounds of Coltsfoot for the years supply for dried- 11.50 (2 dollars per oz dried) I will harvest the greens and cut it together at a later point and adjust as needed.

6 pounds of Burdock root –  (really people) 5 dollars a pound for fresh eating and 15 per pound for cubed and dried.. Ok then..  -30 dollars

26 pounds worth of Dandelion heads at 2.50 each (and I am low but they started out smaller and now are much bigger heads)  -86

3 bunches of green onions (this one is tricky, I have both green onions up and coming in but I also have a lot of just the greens of walking onions coming in) 2.99 per bunch -9

8 0z of dried creeping Charlie – 16 (2 per oz)

8 oz of Dried Spring Nettles – 2.25 per oz -18

3 pounds of fresh eating Nettles – 5 dollars per pound (it take a lot of nettles to fill a jar with dried, compared to fresh eating them) -15

I am down to one tray of sprouts for the first half of the month and now am totally eating from the yard and gardens for greens -60

Started in March

  • Sweet and Hot Peppers
  • Tomato’s
  • Kale
  • Pots of Pea’s
  • Put a number of cane and soft fruit seeds into cold damp status
  • True Potato Seed
  • Potted up Sweet Potato Slips
  • Mixed early greens
  • Bloody Dock seeds
  • Cabbage
  • Broccoli
  • Started a full tub of self-rooting storage beets with tops started that will be transplanted and grown for bi-annual seed collecting for 2017
  • Sprouting potato that will potted up in the same way that will be used for very early summer small fresh eating spuds, rather then waste them at this point.

March imputes: Sprouts -2 trays per day.. organic mixed sprouts each tray is slightly bigger then the tray at the store at 3.99 each.. so that’s 8 dollars per day in sprouts

Total produced : $245.50

  • Jan $161. 40
  • Feb $248
  • March $248
  • April 245.50

March $245.50

Minus – 41.60

March total to the good –203.90

Garden Output to date : In the good $861.30

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Canning Round up for April – 2017

Posted on April 30, 2017 by Just another day on the farm

2017  Please note for ease of tracking, I will be rounding everything up or down into pints.. example, if I do 7 quarts of something, it will be written as 14 pints, if I do 8 80z jars it will be written as 4 pints..  you get the idea.. It will make my life so much easier when I am the math each month for a round up this year..  I will try? to keep the page updated on this on the blog directly but will only share this post at the end of the month. It will be both a monthly round up and a running count for the year.

Total Pints to date for 2017- 114 Pints

  • Canning Running List.
    19 pints of Turkey Veggie Barley Soup
    9 pint of rabbit meat
    4 pints of raspberry-Ginger Jam
    6 pints of blood orange marmalade
    3 pints of kumquat marmalade
    4 pints of lime marmalade
    4 pints of Lemon Crown Royal Jelly
    4 pints of Pink Grapefruit and Rose Petal Marmalade
    6 pints of Seville Orange Marmalade
    9 pints of Beet Pickles
    18 pints of Canned Pork
  • 5 pints of plain sweet bread and butter Sunchoke pickles
  • 1 pint of Sweet Bread and Butter Sunchoke and Pepper Pickles
  • 4 pints of Dill Sunchoke Pickles
  • 9 pints of ham bean soup
  • 9 pints of rabbit stew

 

Feb Update
No canning done in Feb – However I used a total of 47 pints from the pantry thoughout the month of Feb. Out of homemade Canned Corn

March Update
March was a lean canning month (which just makes sense when you don’t buy much off the farm)
-9 pints of Pickled Beets
18 pints of ground pork

April Update

Posted in Canning, dry pantry, food, Food in jars, Food Storage | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

CHC Canada 150 Food Blog Challange -Spring Green’s Burger Recipe

Posted on April 30, 2017 by Just another day on the farm

When the Challenge this month for the CHC Canada 150 Food Blog Challenge 2017 was the fresh foods of spring.  I knew that other folks minds would go to asparagus or rhubarb as those are the first foods of spring in the stores.

Here on the farm.. the first spring foods are Burdock Roots and tiny spring greens, Sunchoke Roots, Tigerlily roots and greens, Horse radish Roots and Greens,  Dandelion Greens and Nettles.

With so many wonderful spring foods the issue became how to do I pick and share a recipe with you in this regards. I have decided to share a few basic ones and then maybe one or two that are more homestead 🙂

Farmgal’s Fresh Greens Burger  (with your choice of a wild greens Mayo or Dandelion Mustard)

Spring Greens Burger Recipe..

  • One pd of grass-fed pasture raised beef- 0 mile
  • 2 fresh eggs- Pastured eggs- o mile
  • 2 cups of finely diced greens- Mine was a mix of stinging nettles, horseradish leaves, Danelion baby greens, fresh spring garlic greens, green onions and chives.
  • Half a cup of leftover homemade pasta sauce (or tomato sauce)
  • Salt, Pepper, Seasoning salt,  Worchester sauce to taste
  • This will give you a very firm filling burger, if you want lighter, consider adding bread crumbs or oatmeal.

Mix very well, now you have a couple choices, you can make meatballs, or you can make burgers and grill then or make burgers and bake them or you can turn this into a awesome meatloaf..

To serve, I went and cut a huge handful of fresh horseradish greens, destemmed them, cooked with till Just wilted in a touch of butter, and then mixed them with mayo, with a touch of seasoning salt which was our burger topping, and it was delightful!

This recipe is credited to the late Rose Barlow.. (this recipe comes out of Whitehorse, Yukon)

Dandelion Mustard

1 cup of yelow mustard seeds whole

1 and 1/4th cup apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup of Dandelion syrip or birch syrup or dark grade b maple syrup

1 cup of fresh cleaned dandelion greens pureed, if you don’t have enough dandlion, you can use chickweed or lambs quarters

1/2 cup of Dandelion petals, (make sure to remove the bitter green parts)

4 cloves of galic, finely chopped.. Pinch of sea salt.

Soak the mustard seeds in the apple cider vinager for several hours, then blend with the rest of the ingredents till as smooth as you would like it. Makes about two cups, to keep it for longer in the fridge, its recommended to pour a little olive oil on top to keep it fresh and moist.

 

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Love my second hand shops

Posted on April 29, 2017 by Just another day on the farm

If there is one thing I love about my close circle of friends is that we are all frugal. Not one of us turns our nose up at second hand things. We are all open to things being gifted, things that are coming from second hand shops, from re-hab centers and from farm sales.

While you do need to be careful these days, some of our local second hand shops have over the past few years gone in a bad way..  you must be careful..

Example.. At my local shop (which we call the church basement) a pair of jeans will cost your 2 dollars at their regular price and a full suit(pants, jackets, shirt and tie) will cost you 15.. but they have sales regular.. 2 for 1 or a 1 for all pants or shirts or dresses or whatever for this week and least 4 times a year they do bag sales.. everything you can fit in a large cloth bag for 5 dollars.

However in the bigger towns they have more known shops and in those ones, its not uncommon now to find jeans for 10 to 15 to 30 dollars for labels.. per pair.. which means that if you are shopping them, it only works for you in two ways,  you are fashion aware and you want to wear the 200 dollar pair of jeans an therefor the 30 is a deal..  or you are in fact frugal and you just want a pair of hard wearing jeans and in that case, sadly(and I do mean SADLY) you can get a pair on sale brand new from places like Walmart for cheaper then you can at the second hand shops in the city.

Home reno’s is pretty close to the same. Yesterday, I was able to get a Solid Hard Wood Door with glass that if you ordered it from Home Depo would be a 300 dollar plus door, even without the handle etc and I was able to pick it up for a mear 15 dollars.. A outstanding savings to say the least. Yes I will need to do a touch of work on it, but its so very minor and its all things I can do myself.

But some of the second hand re-hab centers now can have items for sale that can cost as much or more then the new models will if you are careful, look for lot sales, watch for shop events where they offer discounts and so forth.

This happened when I was wanting to replace our toilet for a higher seat for my mom who has had a hip replacement, I found them at the re-hab store but they wanted more then I paid for a brand new one.  So you really need to learn your prices and cherry pick in both ways.

On a side note, the second half of the roof is 90 percent done and I am so pleased.. no leaks at all on the other side either, the attic itself is perfectly dry and looks great, and I was able to reuse the roofing vents as they matched and fit the holes perfectly as they were undamaged when take on and put back on.

It was wonderful news indeed that the roof was in such great shape under what you could see with your eyes. A very good thing indeed.

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Fading.. its a catch-all word for issues with neonatals

Posted on April 26, 2017 by Just another day on the farm

Its a word that gets used by tiny hobby folks, small farmers and big, its something the vets say.. fading

Its something that is muttered with a scowl by those that have been working this life for years.. we say it with a low voice, a tightening in our eyes and a sound of defeat mixed with a edge of anger

Those that are newer, they say it with wider eyes, with heartbreak in their voices and often with tears in their eyes as they share about the “one”

If you are new to homesteading or livestock, Fading is when the baby is born (sometimes in a hard birth, or sometimes in a normal one) and they latch, or drink, they get up on their shaky feet and you get a few hours, a few days or sometimes even a few weeks and then suddenly..

Its all downhill.. a slow, steady  downhill slide..

This is all to fresh for me.. you see I had a fading chick in my hatch.. one of my little wee blue chicks, it hatched like normal, it drank and eat, it slept in the normal way.. then I started watching it.. I started picking it up more.. looking at eyes (clear and bright) I started checking its bottom, clean and dry, I started watching its placement under the heat lamp.. lots of room for it in the sleep circle , I held it while it drank and it helpfully poo’d in my hand.. normal..

And yet, I knew that it was going to be a fading chick, I knew that it was going to die.. because it was not growing.. as the other chicks shot up in size, as they starting their wing tip feathers coming in, as they all made happy chick sounds..

This wee tike was still pretty much the size of a newly hatched, no feathering out.. something in its system was not quite right.. I gave it med drops in its special water, I ground up its feed even finer for ease of eating. It slept hard and for longer, I took it out and made sure it got extra water and soft feedings X times a day with no siblings..  and then after three days of watching it slow down..

I watched it change the way it lay, no longer in the happy chick way but in the I don’t feel well way.

I put it down. I could have waited for it.. but that’s not me.. I will not allow a baby to suffer when I know what is coming.. It could have hung on for a few more days at most. I was soft and gentle with that chick (as was its due and right) cooing words and soft hands and extra care

But when after the chick went into its soft bed, up came the hard eyed farmgal.. the one that growled to her husband.. I don’t think that chick is going to make it..

The one that wrote notes in her book and then stared at the data on the page and the truth it told.. the most telling of all.. the Fading chicks weight vs the healthy chicks weights..

Data does not lie.. its just letters and numbers and there is a truth in them. Its part of the reason that I will start hard tracking when something is having a issue, when I look, I see it with my eyes, when I touch I feel it with my hands and when I am with it, I feel the emotions that go with it all.. the hope’s I have, the desire to make it all better, the drive to just fine a way that correct whatever it is. The urge to say.. I am sure its just a little better.

I am not sure how to end this post.. So I will go with this..

Keep the hope..

Learn how to do support, how to do the medical help you are legally allowed, always feel like you can consult your vet or if in doubt on what it is, bring in the vet (if you have a vet that will do so and its reasonable to do so)

Track your data, it will show you the answer and the patterns and give you hard facts for your vet (and they will love you for it)

Learn where that line is between working to keep alive to get better and working to keep them alive for just another few hours, or a few days.. Don’t let them linger..

Don’t beat yourself up about it.. if you have done the above.. you did your job.. shelter, warmth, bedding, food, water, proper medication and so forth.

Afterwards, take the time to sit with the healthy.. soak it in as a balm.. A reminder of the joy of it going right..

 

 

 

 

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Interesting Read on a “different way” to look at northern food Security

Posted on April 25, 2017 by Just another day on the farm

http://nftinwt.com/the-obsession-with-hydroponics-and-indoor-growing-damages-northern-food-security/

“Our purpose at the Northern Farm Training Institute (NFTI) is to restore food independence and food security to people and communities in Canada’s North. So we are disappointed when we see resources spent in the name of food security constantly going towards food production methods which do not actually provide food security. The obsession with hydroponics, aquaponics, year-round greenhouses, and other types of indoor growing methods is a major barrier to the establishment of food security in Canada’s Northern communities”

**I have been to this area a number of times, when we lived in Yellowknife, NWT, the thing to keep in mind here, is that this area like many others do in fact have soil, do in fact have the ability to grow and crop hay for winter feed.   When you get into the high artic above the tree line, the conditions do change quite a bit, having said that.. most of the area’s in the Yukon, NWT and even many area of Nunavut are in soil and growing area, the truly high Artic area’s are all coast based as fishing and the seal and so forth are their main or where there many sources of food. As one of Canada’s fastest growing population, it is a very good point that is made by NFTI which is when possible, replacing wild hunting with properly selected livestock that can provide eggs, milk, meat as well as wool or hides an so forth is already needed or will be needed. In the past, the size of the tribes was based on what the land could hold..

The point of Calorie Crops are just as important to all homesteaders and those that are striving to grow more and more of their own food and working within a closed loop between small stock, manure and plants is at least to me.. where its at! FG ***

:Genuine food security means that when the ice road is closed, or the airplane can’t fly, the community can still feed itself the staple foods needed for survival and basic health. This means that northern communities need ultra-stable, and local, sources of calorie-rich foods. Understanding this simple concept is essential for understanding the problem with indoor and soil-less growing techniques in the North.

The primary problem with hydroponic systems, aquaponic systems, and almost all indoor growing systems is that they do not provide the calorie rich foods which are needed for food security. The vast majority of these systems produce only vegetables, and especially low-calorie vegetables like lettuce, kale, chard, spinach, herbs, etc. Human beings cannot survive on these types of foods, which is why these projects do not provide food security.

There are only four categories of staple foods which are capable of keeping a human alive for an extended period of time:

  1. Calorie rich root crops (potatoes, onions, turnips, beets, etc.)
  2. Domesticated grain crops (wheat, barley, corn, rice, etc.)
  3. Tree crops (fruits and nuts)
  4. Meat products from animals
  5. Dairy products from animals (milk, cheese, yogurt, etc.)

At the Northern Farm Training Institute we have experimented with all of these types of foods, and we have also learned from the experiences of others in the North.  Please use the link provided above to read the rest of this excellent article..

 

 

 

 

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