Animal update...

The last two weeks have been a whirlwind of selling!  We sold a few various items from around the house but our primary concern was to sell the animals.

The rabbits have all been bought and picked up...save for a couple of stragglers that managed to escape.  We had some terrible winds here the other day - it picked up the shelter we had the butcher rabbits in and turned it over...releasing all 12 of our pre-sold rabbits.  They ran free for a couple of days until the buyers (our wonderful neighbors) came down and helped us to catch them.  All were caught but 2 so we called it a day and figured we would catch the remaining two some other time.  The breeding rabbits were bought as a package so we were able to sell them, their cage, and all of their supplies.

The cow has been bought by our neighbors however we worked out a deal that she gets to stay on our farm until she calves!  I wanted to be there for the birth and since they aren't ready to take in a cow just yet - it works out for everyone.  How lonely for our baby girl though as she'll be the only animal here through the winter. :(

The roosters were all purchased before the Thanksgiving holiday and the last of the hens will be picked up in a couple of days.  Good timing too as the starlings have shown up again and are eating freely out of the chicken feeder.  (I'll try to get a picture of the hoard of birds that fly in and out of the coop all day long.)  The youngest hens have just started laying too!

We're now finding ourselves slightly bored in the evenings with the absence of chores .  Everyday I continue to purge things from our drawers, cabinets, and lives.  A definite feat for a pack-rat like myself!

Busy, busy, busy....

This time of year is so very busy!  I had forgotten how busy we were last year, scrambling to get everything harvested, preserved and put up for winter.  Blackberries, apples, potatoes, summer squash, cucumbers....seems like everything wants to ripen at the same time!  I'll start first with the cheese.  In the last 10 days, I have made 2 batches of Fromage Blanc and 1 batch of Chevre.  Both are super easy and both follow the same method -

1) Heat milk to 86 degrees F (cow's milk for Fromage Blanc and goat's milk for Chevre)

2) Add culture and allow to rehydrate for 2 minutes, then stir to mix in.

3) keep milk at 72 degrees for 12 hours (I poured mine into a 1 gallon jar and put it in the sink full of 72 degree water.  It's much easier to control the temp of the water in the sink than the ambient air...The water temp is on the left of the thermometer.  I know the picture shows 75 degrees - it just hadn't cooled yet.)

4) Line a colander with dampened cheesecloth.  Ladle milk into cheesecloth.  You can collect the whey that drains and use it for various things (like making pasta or protein shakes) or you can give it to your chickens like I do.  :)  Allow milk to drain for 4-8 hours, until desired consistency is achieved.  Store in airtight container for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator.  That's it!  Fromage Blanc tastes a lot like cream cheese and can be used in recipes that call for cream cheese.  The first batch came out with a weird consistency, almost grainy.  But then again, I started draining it at night and slept in a little late so it had dried a bit too much on the outer layer.  So I threw in some garlic, onion, and salt and made a dip.  (It's at this point that I pat myself on the back for not wasting a botched recipe AND for making something that my oldest really likes!)  I made the Chevre and froze it in 1-cup amounts, wrapped tightly in saran wrap and then vacuum sealed when frozen solid.  It freezes very well and my husband can enjoy fresh, homemade Chevre anytime he wants (I don't care for it).  Below is the batch of Chevre, which made 1 1/2 pounds of cheese from 1 gallon of milk.

Apparently, this year is a great year for cucumbers!  Last year, we were lucky to get the few that we got.  This year, I've already collected a few slicing cucumbers and over 15 pounds of pickling cucumbers!  I've been making pickles like crazy!  I've made two batches of bread & butter pickles (which turned out very good) and a batch of dill pickles (still waiting on the results of those).  This is a picture of the first set of pickling cucumbers that I got...

There were a couple of 1/2 pounds cucumbers in that bunch!!

And then there's the first harvest of both broccoli and summer squash.... This surprises me as broccoli is typically a cool weather crop and summer squash is a warm weather crop....guess we have the best of both worlds!  Our very late warm weather probably had a lot to do with it...

I just LOVE homegrown broccoli - it has such a wonderful flavor, almost nutty.  MMMMMM!  Our summer squash plants have gotten bigger than we thought they would.... much bigger than our zucchini did last year.

Our spaghetti squash is doing really well!  So far, at last count, we have 17 squash!  Here's a picture of the largest one...(sorry, I had to use my keys for comparison - they were the only thing I had with me)

The last couple of weeks, we also said goodbye to the first set of rabbits and hello to 2 more sets.  These ones are 2 1/2 weeks old - in the barn there's also some that are 1 week old and some that are 8 weeks old.

I love this age!  They're cute and look like miniature rabbits...these are 1/4 Champagne D'Argent and 3/4 Satin.  As they get older, their faces will get longer and they will actually look more like rodents...as bad as that sounds.  But this age...they're so cute and cuddly!  I just try not to think about what will happen in about 10 weeks.

The blackberries are starting to come in.  Last year, they took us by surprise as we didn't know they were there.  We picked every day for about 6 weeks...in the extreme heat (not that it's all that hot, but since I don't like to sweat - it was HOT).  Then there was blackberry syrup, blackberry jelly, and blackberry wine...not to mention the dozens of vacuum sealed packages of blackberries that we put into the freezer.  I was actually kind of dreading the blackberry's arrival this year...picking, sweating, cuts and scrapes, sweating, and cooking, oh, and sweating.  But one taste of my husband's blackberry jelly, mmmmm!  Yeah, I'd do it again!  And the size of the berries this year.... it's gonna be a great harvest!  Maybe we'll even be able to sell some....

We also harvested the last of the potatoes.... the russet variety.  Pretty cool - for our first time growing potatoes.  And since they were so easy, and we all love potatoes, we'll be doing them again next year.  For now, it's just a matter of storing them..... I dug them up all by myself while my husband was taking care of some much needed auto repairs.  I was careful and made a couple of observations about the garden....1)earthworms - excellent for the soil and the plants so I was careful to put them back into the dirt and gently cover them with soil so they wouldn't dry out in the heat (I resisted the urge to toss them to my chickens). 2)moles - the bad = they gnawed on a couple of my potatoes and one of my green tomatoes (grrr);  the good = they aerate the soil and allow for bigger potatoes.  So I figured a couple of lost potatoes was the cost for healthy soil and big taters.

There were a couple of odd ones in there....although perfectly good, they're just not something you'd see at the store. :)  And I kinda like that....

The early apples also ripened.  Unfortunately, the slight breeze that we had one day knocked the bulk of them down so we aren't gonna get as many as we would have liked... but there's still plenty on the tree.  And we still have a couple more trees yet to ripen.  We've offered the fallen apples to local farmers for their chickens and pigs...they love them!  And they don't care if there are bugs in them or if they have bruises....  But it's about this time that I'm wishing that we had our own pigs to feed them to... lesson learned - we're getting pigs again in April.

The picture below shows what we picked in about an hour - before the sun came out from behind the clouds and it warmed up too much.  It's not much, but it's more than enough to get me started on making some applesauce.

While picking apples, we stumbled upon this little guy....

We've also decided to make some changes around here.... but more on that later.  For now, I've got my hands full with fruits and veggies - with more coming in every day.  Later this week, I hope to be posting about a new addition to the farm... :D

Spring has Sprung!!

Well, it's definitely Spring 'round here!!  Seems as though we're up to our knees in babies....

Besides the ducks we got at the end of March -

and the cornish cross chicks we got at the beginning of April -

A time for change.......

Things are always changing around here.  I know my last post was almost a year ago *embarrassed* - I can't believe it's been that long.  When I left off, the workload was picking up and I simply didn't have the energy at the end of the day.  I can't make any promises for the future, but I'll try to do better.

So much has happened in the last year, I'm not really sure where to start.  Let's see: