Food

Around here macaroni and cheese is never just that. Tonight it's got a Mexican flair with tomatoes, green onions, cilantro, green chilies, sour cream and two cheeses.

Earlier we started freezing strawberries. Wish I could say they were from our garden but since we didn't plant any I can't do that. Wish I could say they were organic, but all I can say is they were free! I'm sure they'll be good in smoothies.

My First Pressure Canning Experience

 I've been wanting to try pressure canning, but not wanting to invest in the canner if I wasn't going to use it.  Turns out a friend had one that she wasn't using and she let me borrow it to try.  I've had it in my closet for months, waiting for the right alignment of my energy level and something to can, oh and time to try it out AFTER testing the seals, etc.  We've been getting an abundance of tomatoes at the produce rescue, so I've been making sauce and freezing it.  Running out of room in the freezer is what motivated me to give pressure canning a try.  I just heard the pressure lock unlock on this first batch, that means I take off the pressure regulator and wait 10 more minutes before I take off the lid and start on round two.  It holds 5 pints or 7 half pints at a time.  I have 6 quarts of sauce, so if my math is right, that's 3 rounds of canning.

 

While reading through the instruction and recipe book I see that I can cook in this too, so maybe I'll try cooking beans to can my own refried beans?!  Do you have a pressure canner?  How often do you use it and what do you can?

Surprise!

Look what we found when we left for a walk!  This little duck must have hatched during the night, or maybe even yesterday and found it's "mom" this morning.  Buddy the tom turkey did not seem to appreciate this little thing following him around.  The eggs are under a broody chicken, we went into the hen house and there were 3 more babies outside the nesting box.  They are too darn cute, but these pictures don't show that.  They are two weeks younger than the first round that hatched, maybe sometime today I can get good pictures of both batches and share.  They grow really quickly-I'm amazed at how large the two week old ducklings are.

Ick!

Killed this just inside the house. Why aren't my chickens getting them? A couple of weeks ago it was a centipede in my bedroom!

The Zoo

Juicing Day Phase One

Yesterday the food bank had an abundance of cilantro and citrus so today we are juicing. It took nearly an hour to juice 34 bunches of cilantro! The case has 60 and I was going to do the whole thing til I realized how long it was taking. That yielded about 1/2 gallon of juice. We then added 5 jumbo carrots, 5 bell peppers, 5 apples and the leftover lettuce and tomatoes from last night's dinner. We now have 5 quart jars ready for the freezer. Taking a break before starting on the oranges and grapefruit.

Fried Chicken

I love to eat it. Love the smell of it cooking. Don't like eating it when fried in vegetable oil. Or knowing the chicken ate GM feed. The solution? Render my own lard and buy an organic chicken! Smelled so good and tasted fabulous! Herbed cheesy biscuits went well with it.

Learning Something New

It finally dawned on me that I should be able to make blog posts from my smart phone. Don't ask me why I'm figuring it out at 11 o'clock at night though because I really should be asleep!  I'm going to add a photo just to see if I can.

Farm TV

Does anyone know how to take control over time?  We all get the same number of hours in a day, yet some accomplish much and those like me wonder how they do it!  I was cleaning my Inbox and found this picture of the goats.  I took it with my phone (it's rare that I actually take the camera outside) so the quality might not be that good.  I was aiming at the goats on the beam, but when I got inside and looked at it on the computer screen I realized I had all of the goats we owned on that particular day in the shot.

On the beam are the triplets-Popcorn, Firecracker and Mushroom (Goober Gus named them).  At the bottom of the beam is Annie's daughter.  In front is Bambi-a rescued goat.  In the lower right corner (really hard to see) is Molly's rear end and her daughter.  Behind the beam is Annie and behind the post, barely visible is Sugar.  Since taking this picture we have sold Bambi, Sugar and Firecracker.  However, we also gained Trixie, Lilly and Josephine.  Trixie was also sold.  You'd think we were running a farm store here!

Tony took this picture a couple of weeks ago-it overlooks the river valley we live in.  Clouds are rare around here, but not too much this time of year.  Neat picture, isn't it?

 

This is the tarantula that Goober Gus found outside but was too scared to capture.  Mom wasn't afraid though.  Yeah, I'm bad!  When Tony got home he tried to let it crawl up his arm, but it just jumped to the ground on the Forest Service side of the fence.

This was taken back in May.  In an effort to keep the peach tree alive, get grass growing and let the ducks have a little fun, we'd turn the sprinkler on.  I forgot and created a little lake for them, but they didn't care!