We're Fancy!

Leigh and I have had duck on two occasions. Once in Korea I cooked a duck. It was almost inedible. We also had orange duck and Keegan and Laurel's wedding. Hands down, one of the best bites of food I have ever eaten. Based on our split experiences we were a little on the fence about raising ducks for food.

The friend we buy our chickens from gave us a free Muscovy duck as a joke when we got our last batch of chickens. Muscovy's are odd ducks (pun a little bit intended) in that they are not big on the water. They can and will swim, but in no way need water to live. They are from South America so handle heat well. The do not fly well, only about as well as a chicken does. They are easily recognizable because they are huge for ducks and get warty bumps all over their faces. I don't seem to have a picture of our duck but I got one off the Internet. Ours looked just like this.

We were looking forward to duck eggs because supposedly they are wonderful to bake with. We waited and waited...then realized our duck was a boy. It's rough to be a male livestock on our farm. It usually substantially shortens your life expectancy. As soon as Duck started beating up the chickens we knew his time had come. I had never cooked a duck that was edible, so I was nervous. I didn't want to ruin something and have to waste it. I found a recipe for honey duck on Allrecipes.com. I think it came out looking pretty good.

It was not nearly as delicious as the duck at the wedding, but it was for sure edible. A few things we learned though: Braising or slow cooking is a must. The legs were so tough we couldn't eat them. Slaughtering earlier is also a must. The flavor and texture was a lot like beef. Our kids, who neat next to no beef, were not huge fans, but I think it will grow on them.

It will be a few months before we add ducks back to the farm. We would like them to have separate housing from the chickens and be more educated on when to slaughter and how to prepare them. I am happy though that we were able to raise something and eat it. We know that the meat we were eating was free of hormones, antibiotics and additives, and it was humanely raised and slaughtered. That means a lot to us. And you better beilieve the carcass is poised for the stock pot, and the remnants, minus the large bones are destined for the pigs. Waste nothing!

Waste Not, Want Not

We are big on not wasting food here. Something that is harder than it sounds. Anyone with small children realizes that wasting food is part of having kids. We work every day to teach our children where their food comes from and the blessing it is to have a full belly when you go to bed at night. But not wasting food starts far before it gets to the table.

This year we grew about 20 lbs of pumpkins. We forgot to carve them for Halloween. Ooops! I decided I would make them into pumpkin bread. First I had to cut them and clean out the seeds.

Then roast at 400 degrees until they are soft all the way through.

We are a bit spoiled because we have pigs, so once I scraped out the soft squash, I was able to put the stems, seeds and skins into the pig pen. The pigs were happy! Absolutely NOTHING from the pumpkins went into the trash,

I did not end up taking a picture of the pumpkin bread and muffins. I forgot. But here is the recipe for pumpkin bread sweetened with honey:

1 3/4 cup pumpkin puree (this is roughly one 15 oz can)

4 eggs

1/2 cup oil (I used sunflower oil because it is GMO free)

1/2 cup UNSWEETENED applesauce

6 1/2 Tbsp water

1 1/2 cups + 2 Tbsp honey

3 1/3 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1  1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

3/4 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ground ginger

2 tsp baking soda

1 cup walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and flour 2 8x4 loaf pans. (I did one batch with 2 loaves, and one batch with 1 loaf, 12 muffins, and 24 mini muffins).

In a large bowl mix together the pumpkin, oil, applesauce, water, eggs, and honey until well blended. In a separate bowl mix together flour, baking soda, and spices.

Mix the dry into the wet until just blended. Fold in the nuts.

Bake loaves for 50 minutes, muffins for 18 minutes, or mini muffins for 12 minutes.

Enjoy!

The same day I made the pumpkin bread, I also made chicken stock. I usually buy whole chickens because they are cheaper than chicken parts, also I like to use the carcass for stock. This was good practice because we have had to slaughter a few of our chickens and I like to be able to use every part.

I throw the carcass into a pot with about 12 cups of water, 3 tsp of salt, carrots, celery, onions, and 6 whole cloves. This time I also added some peppers Leigh's grandparents grew in their garden. I have been known to add mushrooms, parsley, basil or oregano too, though the more basic the stock is the more versatile it is in recipes.

Cover and simmer a few hours until the stock is rich and flavorful. I use Ball freezer jars because we live at 4700 feet and pressure canning at this altitude makes a horrible noise and I can't stand it. Once I strain out the stock almost all the rest goes to the pigs.

.

I did say almost because I pick out the bigger bones and they DO go in the trash. I don't want the softened bones to splinter in the pigs' throat. We are eventually going to dry the bones of our food and grind them into bone meal for garden supplementation.

But if that was all that went into the trash out of 20 lbs of pumpkins, 2 chicken carcasses and a few pounds of veggies, I think that was a win!

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Children often say very poignant and life changing things. Just not my kids.

Julia and I were talking about how I am trying to stop drinking coffee. I told her it had been only 2 days, but I was going to keep working on it, to which she replied, "Try to go four days. If you don't go four days, I will not be impressed." So that is my mission for the next two days: to impress Julia.

Elliot sat down to dinner. He took a bite of his burger and said, almost to himself, "These are some damn good burgers." Parenting FAIL!

So many other things come out of these kids mouths, I'm going to try and be better about recording them.

Farm Update

We really do enjoy living out here. There is more work than in a housing development, but we think there is more payoff too. It's some of the hazards of country life I am not so fond of. Like reaching for a measuring cup and finding this:

Ya, I actually walked out to the shed and made Leigh come all the way inside to take it outside. Two reasons for that: 1) I didn't know if it jumped and 2) I didn't know if it bit/stung. I have a saying: Better him than me! :)

Elliot loves to "work" outside. Sometimes he legitimately helps. He gardens, helps feed chickens, collect eggs, pulls weeds, and then there is times that he hammers nails into wood and digs holes to fill up with water. Either way, he's outside using his imagination!

Here he is wearing Julia's purple sweater. It was about 65 degrees and he couldn't find a jacket of his own. Instead of waiting for me to find one he said, "I'll just do it myself!"

This is our Muscovy duck. She's kind of fun. She doesn't need a pond, can't fly (she flies about as well as a chicken) and doesn't really quack. You can't tell but it is raining hard in this picture. All the chickens took refuge under the coop, she ran out to sit in it! When the times comes, we'll see if we like eating duck, and if we do, we'll be getting more of these guys!

This is our stately rooster. He spent most of his time perched up high looking over his harem.

Mr. Rooster met his end this week. He is currently in the freezer waiting for an upcoming dinner. He began "cock-a-doodle-doodling" (as Noah says) at 3:30 in the morning and didn't stop until about 10am. One day I was complaining that the 5 dogs we share a property line with bark incessantly and their owners do nothing about it, and Leigh replied "Says the only woman in the neighborhood with a rooster". Ooops...point taken. 

That was not the real reason he became dinner. It was more that he is not the breed of chicken we want to breed, and he was starting to attack us. He actually beat up Elliot pretty bad one day. We have now made room for another rooster.  

The fall garden is sprouting in the shed and in a few weeks we'll transplant the cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce into the new beds in the garden. Elliot is also growing a pot of cilantro he is SOOOO proud of. In a few weeks I'll get the summer garden totals up.

A Kitchen Day

Every few weeks we have what I call a kitchen day. Essentially, I spend all day in the kitchen baking stuff to freeze, canning, and cooking all sorts of goodies. Kitchen day can go one of two ways, either a day when the kids have minimal supervision and get in all kinds of trouble, or they help and we all have a blast! Today was the latter:

I bought all these aprons from my wonderfully talented friend Jerie. The kids love to be "real bakers". Apparently baking does not require careful measurement, great skill or quality ingredients. You just need a really nifty apron.

I had soooo much baking to do. We had one more giant zucchini from Tab and Ty that needed to be made into zucchini bread. (Nevermind I already made 7 loaves and 24 muffins.) I had 4 dead bananas that needed to be made into bread, a TON of tomatoes and jalapenos than needed to be salsa. We needed sandwich bread and I still needed to make ham and bean soup for dinner.

Each of the kids got to pitch in for one of the things we made.

Overall, I would say that kitchen day was successful! And yes, there is a huge dent in the bread from Elliot's fist. It's just what he does if left alone with freshly baked bread for more than one second. I have tried to lecturing, yelling, scolding...it seems to be a compulsion. Now I just ignore it. I make his PB&J's with the smooshed bread and he doesn't seem to care. And tonight Phoebe stole half that loaf of bread off the counter, and she didn't seem to mind either.

This Little Piggy

So when we purchased our homestead we discussed what we would be raising and when. We had a timeline. In order of importance we had: egg chickens, garden, bees, goats, rabbits, and meat birds. Notice what is NOT on there. Yep. Pigs. I didn't want to raise pigs our first year...well really at all because I thought I would become attached, I thought it would be expensive, I thought they would smell...Well, only one of those is true. They smell.

Our friends from TNT Ranch, Tab and Ty, (Leigh works with Tab) bred their pig and ended up with 18 piglets. Somehow...I'm still not sure how...I agreed that we could raise not one, but two. Then Aunt Chrissy said she wanted one. So now we are raising three. And as much as I hate to admit it, its fun!

The first thing we had to do was build a pen that would be strong enough to keep three 270 lb pigs confined, and judging by my chicken coop, I was not the person for the job. Luckily Ty had the know-how and the equipment. Under his direction and with the help of his auger we sunk railroad ties and attached hog panels to them. The ground we have here is UNBELIEVABLE! So easy to see why you can build houses out of adobe. It was seriously like concrete!

We had to soak the ground and that made a horrible muddy mess-that the kids thought was FABULOUS!

People pay good money for mud baths. Noah got one for free!

We are an equal opportunity family!

Once the pen was constructed it was time for pigs! Leigh named them Red, White, and Blue. We got them over 4th of July weekend but one is red:

One is white, and the one with the black ears had 1 blue eye.

From left to right: White, Red, Blue:

They have lots of room for the time being. Come this fall we will have lots of very yummy pork. I am not that attached to them. Red bites and White and Blue avoid me like the plague, though Leigh can get them all to let him touch them.

Leigh had to take Blue to Chrissy to have him castrated (we are not ready to start having piglets...and they are siblings). Apparently he helped. Blue was pretty mad at us for a few days after. I got the chance to vaccinate Red and White, and we have to do all of them again in about a week and a half. Pig wrangling is kind of fun...when they don't bite you.

But alas, we do not have a single dairy goat or bees, but we do have 3 little piggies. I guess it's a fair trade off. I love bacon and sausage and I am happy to be able to give these pigs a happy and safe life until it is time for them to provide safe nourishment for my kids. But I don't think I'll ever be a full fledged pig farmer. 3 non-breeders are good for me!

A preview of bees

The ultimate goal...and there are a lot here on Mediocre Acres...is to have 2 operational bee hives. There are a few reasons for this. Hold on to your hats were about to have a lesson in bees:

In the past six or so years, bee keepers have reported the disappearance of entire colonies of bees seemingly overnight. They have dubbed this phenomenon Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). There are several theories as to why this has been happening, but there is no conclusion as of yet. Some of the theories (and as I see it they are all contributing factors) are: GM crops, malnutrition (monoculture deprives bees of a diverse diet), pesticides, and climate change. Without the honey bee it would be impossible for us to produce food.

There are several documentaries on Nexflix explaining more in depth about CCD such as "Vanishing of the Bees" and "Colony".  In an attempt to do what little we can to help this issue, we decided that raising honeybees would be great because we would be helping the bee population and be getting home grown honey too! We are planning a few areas on the property to be designated flower gardens with plants especially favored by the bees like poppies, lavender and rosemary.

We got to the point of purchasing the bees (hives and equipment are already purchased) and had to "reallocate" some funds (to stuff like food and electricity) so bees will not happen until next Spring. But that's okay. Beekeeper Leigh is ready for next year!

And so is Jr. Beekeeper Elliot!

While it is not possible for everyone to keep bees, help how you can by planting bee friendly plants in your garden, avoiding GM food when possible, and not using pesticides. There are lots of non-chemical pest deterrents you can use. Just use the Google-machine and you can find lots! One of the best ones we have found is letting children into the garden to pick bugs off the plants and letting them feed them to the chickens! Fun had by all...well, except for the bugs. So stay tuned till next Spring for when we get the bees!