We had a pretty serious storm last night. Business is hoppin which means I only use 1 stall in the barn for personal use as every stall I fill reduces how much we make that month. Charlotte is not quite big enough to go out in the pasture yet (she is not tall enough to get water out of the trough unless it is totally full)...


note the cat watching in the backround

  ...so Jackie and Cindy Lou Who are stuck outside, even if it storms 

 They weathered the storm (though I woke up several times worrying about them and tried to plug my ears so I could fall back asleep without hearing the storm because it made me worry more). I need to remember that they are animals and they can survive outside. Plus they do have their matching pink raincoats.

When I arrived home today they were enjoying the sunshine that appeared after lunch (and the wheat grass that is coming up)

weeding

I have been doing a lot of weeding in various garden beds lately and I collected a wheelbarrow load full. 

I was headed to dump it in a pile back in the woods, when it occured to me that this wood be a great treat for the chickens.

They pecked and rolled and and wallowed (pronounced wallered around here) and scratched and ate for hours and hours.

Slide found their activity to be an entertaining show for a while

....officially the first full day of spring....

I have transplanted nearly all of my seedlings I started a month or so ago into the spring garden.  (The only ones that have not been planted are the asparagus). 

There is lots of straw mixed in this bed because I dumped there whenever I cleaned out the chickarium (aka chicken coup) over the winter.

There was not room for the peas so they will have to go somewhere else.

Strawberries have flowers now and I canot wait for those.  The blackberry bushes are also getting lots of leaves.

Strawberries...and Molly....and a nice green pasture of Triticale that will be cut for silage in a month or so

Today my mom comes to visit for the whole week so I have got to finish cleaning.

Babies

Spring is the time of year for babies.  You have met the baby calf that joined our family this year.  Here are our most recent baby additions.

This is our inexpensive, makeshift brooder (clear sterillite tub, paper towels, heat lamp and an old window screen as a lid.  I use paper towels to line the box for the first week or two because the chicks have not figured out what is food and what isn't and I don't want them eating shavings)

3 chicks we are adding to our small flock.  We had 8 layers, but we lost one on new years eve.  We also have Kudzu the game hen.  We decided to add just a few more chickens this year (mostly because of my desire to have baby animals around this spring).

We ordered 4 chicks, but one of them unfortunately did not make it.

Gold laced wyandotte (Dahlia)

Silver laced wyandotte (Zinnia)

White plymouth rock (Daffodil)

 Yes all the chickens have names and yes theya re all named after flowers (no I don't plan on eating them---we already have:

Rhode Island Red (Poppy)
Jersey Giant (Citralia...no that is not a real flower, but that is another story for another day)
2 Barred Rocks (Azalea and Tulip)
3 Easter egger hybrids (Magnolia, Marigold, Lavendar)
Wheaten game hen (Kudzu...rescue chicken, also another story for another day)

Raining Wednesday

Today it has rained all day, a lot.  My plans to take my plants I started from seed a couple of week ago outside have been hindered by rain twice now.  Over the past weekend it rained 3 and a half inches, though I did manage to plant my strawberry plants Saturday morning before it really started to come down and they look great.  Today was a home day because I have been feeling poorly since the weekend and I have a big test to take on Saturday for grad school so I want to make sure I am well.  I stayed home and took a nap, studied a lot, made some bread in the bread maker and some pizza dough so Myles can make us pizza for supper (yum).  I washed my hands a lot so hopefully I will not contaminate anyone else with my cold.  I also got in a bit of reading and a bit of knitting which was great.  Spring (am I getting ahead of myself by saying it is spring) is very busy, and between school, work, and home (animals, gardening, cooking and cleaning) there has been very little time for reading or knitting which are two of my favorite things to do.  Although I will be sad when school is out for the summer i am looking forward to getting to spend more time on the other things I love to do.

Our new real food diet is going well.  We have enjoyed our meals this week end Myles and my dad have taken to reading a lot of labels curiously, wondering what is in some of the things we still have around the house.  Bad news for the mayonaise we buy (lucky for me we have a few jars in the cabinet so it will be a while before I have to tackle that one).  I am also going to attempt to be less lazy about the milk we drink.  I have been buying milk (yes, spending money on exactly what we make here).  I have been drinking skim milk since I was a kid (high cholesterol) and turning the rich whole milk into fat free-ish skim milk is work, but I guess I need to step it up a notch.  We are enjoying though, knowing that what we are putting in our bodies is real food, not something that just looks like food.

Eating food...

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants"  This is what Michael Pollan says in his In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.  I think we are all guilty of eating stuff that looks like food AND tastes great, but is not good for us at all and is probably not really food.  We are defintely guily of this here at our house.  So this week we started a new eating plan.  We are vowing to not buy any food that has more then 5 ingredients, particularly if those ingredients are unrecognizable.  So today was the first grocery list.  We will continue to eat what we already have in the house even if it does not follow the rule (no need to waste), but we will not buy any other food that breaks the rule with the exception of a splurge item per person.  Myles has to have his peanut butter/cheese crackers to grab on the go for lunch on busy days around the farm after all (I don't know what my splurge item will be yet).  I decided this week to plan our meals like I would every other week, because I was pretty sure most of what we eat does follow these rules.  So the menu for the week is as follows:

(Monday mom is making ham and potato casserole so I did not have to plan for tomorrow)

TUESDAY- Spicy pork tacos (ingredients- boston butt, garlic, onion, cumin, chili powder, salt, pepper, olive oil, coke, limes, corn torillas, cheese, veggies for topping, salsa and sour cream)

WEDNESDAY- BBQ chicken pizza (left-over bbq chicken, pizza crust, BBQ sauce, mozarella)

THURSDAY- blackened chicken salad (chicken, cajun seasoning, oil, salad veggies, ranch)

FRIDAY- garlic lime shrimp pasta (limes, garlic, olive oil, shrimp, salt, pepper, pasta)

So off to the grocery store we went.  I was right, we pretty much do buy stuff that fits the rule, but there were a few food items we did not put in the cart. 

• The coke for the pork (it cooks in the slow cooker, so coke is the liquid we usually add) does not fit the rule, so I will be substituting water and a little sugar.
• Some tortillas would be a no, but we have a tortilla factory in town, so I will have to pick up fresh tortillas on my way home Tuesday (though there are brands at the grocery store that fit the rule)
• The pizza was a problem (my hope for that night was that Myles could make the pizza because I have a lot of studying to do for a big test Saturday).  I planned on picking up a refridgerated pizza dough, but alas too many ingredients and a few unrecongnizable ones at that.  Myles has never made his own pizza dough before, but he has seen me do it and I think he is up to the challenge.  Also the BBQ sauce we have was a gift and has only a few ingredients so it meets the rule.
• The blackened chicken salad ingredients all went in the cart, until we got to the dressing.  I always make ranch from a packet...and the ranch packet had A LOT of ingredients and some really hard to pronounce ones.  So, though I have never made my own ranch dressing before from scratch, the time has come.  We still have some made in the refridgerator (from the packet) left from this weekend so I will use that for our salads this week, but then it will be time to learn to make my own.
• All the pasta ingredients were good to go (will be using the pasta maker to make my noodles).

The only other food we needed was bread.  It was a no go.  I have made bread before, but with the time constraints of our busy lives it was never a regular practice.  Today I made a loaf in the bread machine, I love the bread machine.  It is so easy and fast.

Thus chronicles the beginning of our path to eating real food.  I'm sure we will have to let go of other things we love that we have not thought of yet, but in an effort to eat food that makes us healthier, I believe it will be worth it.

SPRING?!?!

Over and over I say I will start posting more often, I enjoy it (on the occasion I find the time) and it is sort of relaxing to sit down and think about something that is not school, school or school.  But if I keep promising myself I will post so many times a week or a month, then I just get disappointed when I don't find the time.


SOOOOOO......I will just give my self the goal to post when I have time.


We have so much going on this spring, several new members of the family, and lots of food and gardening plans. 
This spring we plan to triple the garden space we have at home. 
We are planting sweet corn somewhere else on the farm so I don't count that as garden space because it is a sort of community corn garden. 
We are getting a few chicks this week to expand our laying flock and chicken breed variety. 
We are getting hogs this spring, this will be our first time raising hogs so I am excited about this (and all the pork we will have to eat next winter).


Wow I need to get busy---add to that working all day and going to grad school and that makes for a busy me.


Also add to that early morning feedings of the newest member of our family

This is Charlotte, she is 1/4 Holstein, 1/4 Jersey, 1/2 Charolais ...... what is that you ask, it is a mutt of a cow.  Her mother came to the farm a bred half Holstein/half Jersey (with several others) that the previous owner thought was bred by his Holstein bull, "but oh by the way my neighbor's Charolais bull got in with my cows too).  The result is Charlotte, a half dairy/half beef cow (in my opinion that just makes her well rounded).  Charlotte is a pet, she will be living out in the pasture with Cindy Lou Who, the donkey and Jackie, the horse once she is weaned in a few more weeks.


That's it for the day, I'm off to sleep so I can start again tomorrow morning (please note it is 8:30, that is my bed time- GOODNIGHT)