sorrel: this year's darling of the garden

Each season that we grow vegetables, something surprises us. Some variety always performs better, tastes better, is hardier or more abundant than we ever anticipated. This season it was sorrel (correction: IS sorrel).



Sorrel is a tangy, leafy green that can be cooked, eaten raw in salads or used as an herb for it's tart, lemony flavor. I put some in the garden this spring, expecting that it would mature along with my spring greens - my lettuces, spinach, arugula and the like. I had never tried to grow it before, and was a bit disappointed that it never really kept pace. Eventually, long after the last of the lettuce was gone and the extreme heat of summer was in full force, the sorrel sprang to vigorous life. We now have a thick carpet of it's pointed, emerald green leaves in our garden bed, and it is handily holding its own against heat, drought and wind. When cabbage loopers ravaged every single leafy plant I had, the sorrel was utterly unaffected. When I cut some in early June for a spring-inspired risotto, it suddenly shot up and filled the gaps, gaining inches overnight. We adore this fresh tasting green so many ways, and now that I know it will be a reliable hot weather performer for us, it has earned a permanent place in our garden. I urge you to give it a try too!

Sorrel Tabouleh



1 cup bulgur wheat
1 cup water
a pinch of salt
several large handfuls of sorrel leaves, washed and chopped
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint
1 fresh tomato, diced
2-3 ounces crumbled feta
olive oil
lemon juice
salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste

Heat water and salt to a boil. Stir in bulgur, remove from heat and cover. Let stand for thirty minutes. Fluff grains with a fork.

Transfer bulgur to a large bowl. Add sorrel, mint, feta, tomato, salt and pepper. Stir gently to combine. Add just a squeeze or two of lemon juice (not too much, as the sorrel has a tart flavor) and enough olive oil to make it as moist as you like it. Toss well and serve immediately or refrigerate and serve chilled.

u-pick

This was a great day. We got up on the last somewhat cool Saturday morning of the season with a mission: to drive to a neighboring town to meet our CSA lady at the farmers market and pick up our veggie share. With us was a cooler full of eggs and cheese to deliver. We were wheeling and dealing.

The farmers market was small, but one of the better ones I've seen. Most of the vendors were selling actual produce and preserves that they had actually produced themselves (a rarity around here, believe it or not). We had a nice chat with Marilyn and met some new people. We traded eggs, cheese and cash for compost tea, sweet potato slips and more cash. The cash from the eggs bought us some delicious apricot preserves, and some vegetables we'd been dying for - a few ripe tomatoes and sweet peppers. We left the market with a beautiful haul of fresh vegetables, herbs and preserves, two jugs of compost tea and sweet potato vines to plant in our own garden. Our total cash outlay was five dollars.

On the way home, we stopped at a u-pick orchard that Marilyn had told me about a few weeks before. Ken and Lara Halverson grow beautiful fruit as well as a nice selection of vegetables to pick yourself. If you're pressed for time, you can stop by and pick up items they've already harvested, but I recommend going for the full experience here. Trust me, those berries will taste sweeter if your hands are sticky from collecting them. We met Ken and Lara, and with nine dozen eggs still in our cooler, made an almost even swap - all of our eggs for about four pounds each of blackberries and peaches. Ken was gracious enough to give us some pointers about where to get blackberry canes of our own to start.

We ate a ridiculous amount of fresh fruit over the first three or four days, a little bit went into the freezer for later, and some of the berries went into a deep-dish blackberry pie (divine!). It was the most delicious fruit I think we've ever eaten. It was delicious in its own right, of course, but I think it was also satisfying because of the way it was obtained. We supported a small, local grower, picked the fruit ourselves, and made a connection with new people. If you live in Dallas-Fort Worth, pay them a visit, and be sure to eat a few berries in the car on your way home.

happy meal

Thus concludes our first experiment with raising broiler chickens! I can finally say that all things considered, it was quite a success. We suffered some heavy losses in the beginning, but ultimately I'm not at all unhappy with the outcome.

These are Freedom Ranger broilers from JM Hatchery. Because we got two shipments and processed them in two batches, their age at processing time varied between 10 and 12 weeks. Their dressed weights appear to be mostly between four and a half and five pounds, and they had a nice amount of fat on them. They started out in a brooder, of course, and we moved them outside to a pasture shelter after a few weeks. They got moved onto fresh grass every one to two days and therefore had some forage to supplement their grain ration. We also supplemented them with goat's milk during their last few weeks. We ran some numbers and concluded that it cost us approximately $1.50/lb to raise these birds. When you consider that I've been paying $4.29/lb for comparable pastured chicken, that wound up being quite a good deal! It took four people of varying experience levels about ten hours to process thirty-one birds, and that's without the aid of a large drum plucker. All these facts and figures didn't mean much, however, without knowing how they'd taste...

The verdict is in - they taste AMAZING!

The fact that the expense was quite manageable and the extra work was minimal makes this an endeavor worth repeating! For a few minutes a day and one or two long days of processing, we can have delicious, healthy, humanely raised chicken right from our own backyard, for less than the price of supermarket chicken. Few things we've undertaken here have made me more proud than this.

*Update*

If you're curious about the butchering process, there is an excellent tutorial here. We do it essentially the same way, with a few minor changes to suit our particular circumstances. Be sure to follow that by checking out this post.

As for the way I cooked this bird, I brined it for a couple of hours in a simple brine of water, kosher salt and sugar, and then roasted it according to this recipe (scroll down past the mushroom soup recipe). Again, I make a few small changes, but this is a wonderful and pretty much fool proof way to roast a bird.

the first share

Friday morning was crazy. It started very early. Something like 2:30 am, in fact. I was awakened by the dogs, who apparently saw a super scary bunny outside and had to let me know that they had HANDLED THE THREAT. It was rough after that. No one got much sleep, and we all grudgingly rolled out of bed in the dark of the early morning to start our day bleary-eyed and cranky. It was stormy and wet that morning, and while I normally could have stayed in bed awhile longer, I had to be up and out extra early. I had an appointment to keep - a new adventure, in fact. I hurriedly milked the goats, saddled up and hit the road with a stop in town for more coffee and a bear claw (big mistake - too early for that much sugar). I was traveling two towns over to pick up our very first CSA share.

This was a very exciting moment. I have been trying to find a CSA near me to join for probably five years now, with no luck. There just haven't been that many in this area, and they were always either prohibitively far away or the pickup was at a time that I had no hope of ever making (like during my work hours). I've tried year after year, always in vain, until now. I got a half share, with the intention of using it as a supplement to what we're already growing for ourselves, and I think that's going to work out perfectly. Even for a half share, it wound up being more than I expected to receive, and it looked beautiful.



I had a lovely chat with the woman in charge, and the drive to her farm from mine was really beautiful - rolling green, curving farm roads, big shady trees. As I drove home, the skies cleared and the sun cut through the sodden morning like a song. The first thing I saw upon pulling up to the house was our anxiously-awaited new ducklings, just hatched that morning while I was away.



It was going to be a good day.

Basket contents for 4/23/10: mixed lettuce, swiss chard, mustard greens, collards, peas, broccoli, radishes, salad burnet, chives, onions, leeks, arugula, cilantro, parsley, thyme, dill

Home production as of 4/23/10: onions, mixed lettuce, spinach, cress, radishes, eggs, milk, cheese

how things are coming along

It has been a couple of years since I started this blog, and in that time we've gotten married, moved to the farm and taken on quite a few new projects and challenges. We've had some fairly lofty goals for ourselves all along and I thought it might be a good time to take a look back at our efforts and give an update on where we are now. If you're new to homesteading, or still just dreaming, understand that it isn't a race, and that it will take time. Don't beat yourself up if it's your third year of gardening and you're still not getting a bumper crop, or your bread didn't rise, or your hens have stopped laying and you haven't the faintest idea why. Some of the things we've set out to do have gone pretty much just as expected, while others brought big surprises. Some things we assumed would be no-brainers have proved to be surprisingly difficult, while things we were sure we'd screw up have been remarkably problem-free. Here is a brief synopsis of the things we've aced and the things we've buggered up over our first three years:

1. Vegetable Gardening: the obvious place to start for most homesteaders
The Goal: to grow (almost) all of our own vegetables
We've now planted three spring gardens and one fall garden (at two locations). While the results have been very mixed, our overall yields are gradually improving. I've learned a lot about growing veggies in general and about the nuances of gardening in Texas. We've had great success with greens regardless of season but still haven't managed to grow tomatoes or potatoes despite their reputation for being easy. They have become the holy grail of our gardening efforts - not because we even like them that much, but because we hate being denied. We also live on a long-neglected cattle pasture and have had to struggle quite a bit to build any sort of workable soil. As it stands now in our third year, we're probably growing about a quarter of our own produce, and expanding each season. We knew this would take time, and I'm not unhappy with our progress so far.
Biggest Success: homegrown greens on our table at Thanksgiving
Biggest Failure: those pesky potatoes
Biggest Surprise: digging under our HUGE potato plants at harvest time to find not. one. spud.

2. Rabbits: our first foray into livestock
The Goal: meat for ourselves and the dogs (with extra to sell), fertilizer
What a ride this has been. Rabbits were the first animals we ever bred and butchered. They were billed as easy keepers, which they mostly are - quiet, low space requirements, low feed requirements, low upfront investment. They do make copious amounts of wonderful fertilizer as promised. What they do not reliably make are babies. After three years, six breeding animals and countless litters, we have successfully raised only four baby rabbits, and have only eaten one animal in all that time - an adult that we had to cull early (the four babies were passed on to other people in barter arrangements). We also learned that they do very poorly in our extreme summer heat. They are, however, easy to keep around and easy to process. We really want to make rabbits work for us, so with some tweaking, we continue to persevere. This year they will be moved outdoors and we're transitioning them to a mostly foraged diet with supplemental hay and very little pellet feed. If things don't improve this year, we may be scrapping rabbits.
Biggest Success: loads of fertilizer
Biggest Failure: loads of babies that haven't survived
Biggest Surprise: rabbits just don't breed like, well...rabbits...in captivity, apparently

3. Laying Hens: the golden egg
The Goal: all the eggs we can eat, plus extra to sell and the occasional chicken dinner
This project has gone extremely well. Chickens are very hardy, unfussy and generally dependable. They are also wonderfully scalable, in that it's no more work to take care of thirty chickens than three, so if you have the space you really might as well go bigger. The return on the extra eggs is more than enough to pay for the cost of keeping them, so we actually do make a little bit of a profit here, which is nice. We get all the eggs we want, plus lots of extras for the dogs. A retired laying hen or extra rooster makes the best chicken soup we've ever eaten, and the dogs win here too - they get necks, organs and other throwaway bits. The fact that we can generate our own replacement stock makes this an all-around win. This project hasn't been without its setbacks, but they've been comparatively few.
Biggest Success: turning a (tiny) profit
Biggest Failure: unknowingly sending a batch of new chicks to bed (and to their demise) with a rat snake - boy, do we feel bad about that one, still
Biggest Surprise: the books don't tell you all the things that will cause them to STOP laying

4. Other Poultry: ducks and broilers
The Goal: meat supply for ourselves and the dogs, with extras to sell
(You may have begun to notice a theme here - our goals tend to center around food production. Our over-arching aim, the one that all other goals tie into, is to be totally or nearly self sufficient in as many areas as possible. That means fulfilling most of our needs ourselves with as few external inputs as possible, and in a way that still allows us to live fairly well. We've started with our food, since that seems to be the easiest place to start and the area where we can make the biggest impact right away.)
We acquired our ducks as a breeding pair, free of charge, from a friend. They were reported to be quite prolific and it seemed like a good way to add extra meat to our freezer. Much like the rabbits, we have yet to eat a single duck, but that's not got much to do with their performance. They do perform as advertised, and are extremely low maintenance. They lay and set large clutches of eggs, eat very little feed and prefer to sleep out in the open. In short, they require virtually no care. We've had some failed hatches due to things such as cold weather and egg-thieving predators, and the ducklings that have hatched have so far all been sold or traded away before they met the chopping block. They're unexpectedly charming, and as easy as they are to keep around, we'll keep them whether they ever do anything productive or not. Raising chickens strictly for meat is a project that's still in its infancy here, so it's a bit too soon for a progress report. Our first batch was a group of heritage breed roosters, which turned out bland, small and a bit tough, without much to recommend them. We're almost to harvest time with a batch of proper broiler-type birds, but as they're still on the wing, the jury is still out on them.
Biggest Success: too soon to declare
Biggest Failure: losing over half of a batch of about sixty-five broiler chicks (although this wasn't technically our fault)
Biggest Surprise: duck eggs make world class egg salad

5. Goats: the sweetest milk trucks on earth
The Goal: keep dairy goats for milk, cheese and soap, for our own use and to sell
Keeping goats was probably the undertaking we most feared - it involved LARGE LIVESTOCK, a considerable upfront investment, a significant learning curve, and holy crap we'll have to birth babies! We've only had goats for one year, which is really a short time in the scheme of things, but honestly this one has been far easier than we imagined. Books, websites and other goat raisers filled our heads with all sorts of fears and conflicting advice, and in the end we just had to get zen about it and go with our gut. We've adapted our methods to suit our individual circumstances, and keep our goats in good flesh largely through attentiveness and good management. We've brought forth three babies to two first-time fresheners, learned to disbud and give shots and are milking about a gallon a day. I'm making good chevre, feta and ricotta, with other cheeses and dairy products in development. Other goat milk products such as soap and cajeta are in development right now as well. They also provide us with good fertilizer, good company and loads of entertainment.
Biggest Success: killer feta whenever we want it!
Biggest Failure: umm, none really
Biggest Surprise: how much we adore them

6. Bees: the littlest army
The Goal: honey, beeswax and related products (with extra to sell), plant pollination
Even though we've been trying to establish some honeybees for a couple of years, this one still feels too early to call. Our first attempt was a swarm that just never would play ball, and the following year we ordered some package bees that arrived dead. Not to be deterred, I ordered and received another package this year, only to have them FLY OFF just three days after moving them in. I've finally got two colonies going that are looking good, but since they've only been around for a few days, it's just impossible to rate this one yet. I will say that I find them intensely fascinating, and apparently enjoy them enough to keep throwing money at this hobby even though it has so far yielded nada.
Biggest Success: finally getting some colonies established (so far, fingers crossed)
Biggest Failure: watching our third attempt at bees fly away right before my eyes
Biggest Surprise: how much I'm willing to invest in this before giving up

7. DIY: not buying it
The Goal: to supply many of our own needs, such as pet and animal feed, household products, repairs and maintenance, construction, etc.
We're doing rather well here so far, although it's a long road. We're making compost, we've built a combined chicken coop and shed and I've begun making our soap. we're supplying more and more of our animals' diet from on-property - between wild edibles, kitchen scraps, butchering waste and excess eggs, milk and whey from cheesemaking, our overall feed bill continues to decline and almost nothing goes to waste. With the exception of onion skins and orange rinds, pretty much everything gets eaten by someone, and if not, it goes to the compost. We do still have a long way to go in this area, though, and we realize we will always have certain needs we can't fulfill on our own. It's a process.

8. Financial Independence: freedom, in a nutshell
The Goal: to need as little actual cash as possible, so we can work as little as possible
This ties in closely with DIY, and again, is a lengthy process. We've made some significant steps forward - paying off the car, paying off the mortgage, dramatically reducing our debt and finding some non-conventional income streams. The downside here is that we still have some debt to whittle away at, a brand new mortgage, and we still need hard cash for quite a lot of things, although we're closing the gap more and more all the time. Each new endeavor requires an upfront cash investment, but eventually translates to one less thing we have to buy on a continuing basis. We'd like to reduce our needs to the point where we can comfortably live on roughly half of what we earn today (or even less) and take back a large chunk of our time.

Well, there you have it - the biggies. There have been other small victories and disappointments, too numerous to mention, but these are the things that have made us elated, made us cry, kept us up nights, brought us peace and made our bones ache. For all the times you haven't seen us, or we haven't called, or we just couldn't make it...this is what we have to show for it. We've come an awfully long way in two years and yet have so much more ahead of us.

100% home grown

There are few things more satisfying to me than eating food I've grown or made myself. I just put this salad together for dinner - in the bowl I have spinach, mixed baby lettuce, radishes, cress, spring onions and crumbled feta. I did not buy a single one of these things at the store. Not one. Everything in this bowl came out of my garden or barn. That's freedom, y'all. Freedom to say "No, thanks - I don't have to eat what you're peddling." Try it for yourself today. Bake a loaf of bread from scratch, plant some seeds, keep some laying hens. You'll feel great knowing you have something that you don't rely on anyone else for. Take the power back.

cajeta

We have so much goat's milk, that I'm having to find new ways to preserve it (in the form of other things). I'm making quite a bit of cheese, but I don't have a cheese press built yet and there's only so much soft cheese we can eat. I also plan to use some of it for soap, but the volume of milk that goes into a batch of soap is actually quite small. Today, because I had a really huge excess to deal with, I tried my hand at a batch of cajeta.



Cajeta is a traditional Mexican caramel made with goat's milk. It can be cooked down to a sauce, a bit longer for a spread or even longer for a candy. I chose to cook mine to a sauce to be used on ice cream, cakes or as a dip for apples or cookies. I will pack it into half pint jars to store, and will probably give a few away to friends and family too. If you find yourself with a lot of milk, give this a try! (I understand you can also make this with cow's milk, if that's what's available to you.)

Cajeta

3 quarts of fresh goat's milk
3 cups sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
optional flavoring - I used 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. Some people use vanilla beans, some use cinnamon, or you can use what you like. Or leave it out altogether

Mix baking soda and cornstarch into one cup of the milk, whisking well to break up any lumps. Combine this mixture with the rest of the milk and the sugar in a large pot. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring very frequently to prevent scorching. Once the mixture comes to a boil, reduce heat to maintain a steady simmer. Cook mixture at a constant simmer, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking/scorching (you don't have to stir constantly at this stage, but keep a pretty close eye on it). This will cook for a rather long time. Mine took about three hours from start to finish. Nothing will happen for a long time, and then eventually the volume will reduce, the mixture will start to darken into a golden color, and it will gradually thicken. Continue cooking until it reaches the consistency you want, keeping in mind that it will thicken further after cooling. If after cooling it is too thick, you can add hot water a tablespoon or so at a time until it reaches the proper thickness. If it is still too thin, simply put it back on the heat and cook it some more. The picture above is what mine looked like when finished.

Once it is to your liking, pour into clean jars and seal. Store in the refrigerator and use as desired.*

* I'm looking into whether it is possible to can this so it can be stored on the shelf. If anyone knows, please, do tell!

limits in the time of plenty

It's early spring, and we are being hit full-force by an abundance of food. We're collecting upwards of two dozen eggs each day. We're milking over a half gallon a day from one doe, with a second doe due to kid any time. I use the excess milk to make cheese and then we have close to a gallon of whey (great for baking, but...wow...I can't use that much). There are thirty broiler chicks busting out of the brooder, four extra roosters who are dead men walking and a goat kid that may end up being freezer-bound (and more on the way). Two of our rabbits have buns in the oven, and both of our ducks are setting clutches - when they hatch, we'll have somewhere between twenty and thirty ducklings, all of which will grow FAST. I was finally, at long last able to join a CSA this year, and our own garden looks primed to grow like gangbusters. For a two-person household, this is A LOT of food.

This situation is wonderful. And terrifying. We abhor waste around here, so while having such a bounty feels like money in the bank, letting any of it get away from us sort of feels like throwing money on the fire. It puts us under tremendous pressure to make sure every bit gets eaten, whether by us or someone else, whether now or later. We need to stay on top of harvesting, butchering, preserving, and finding about twenty more ways to eat eggs.

In light of all this, now seems like a great time to begin an experiment I've been turning over in my head for awhile. I've come to really dislike grocery shopping. It used to be a task I rather enjoyed, but perhaps now that any trip to the store is something of a hike, I really find it tiresome to constantly have to run out for this thing or that thing. For that, and a host of other reasons, I've decided to (barring actual emergencies) only shop once every three months. I'd love to make it every six months, but frankly we don't have the capacity to store that much food, so quarterly it will have to be. Some thoughts came to my mind while hatching this half-baked plan, the first of which was, "Great! I hate grocery shopping, so now I can do it a lot less often!" Once my euphoria wore off, however, I considered the practical aspects. I considered that every time we go shopping, we invariably come home with many more things than we went after. Each trip we don't make eliminates an opportunity for impulse-buying. Furthermore, resigning not to shop for three months at a time will force us to make good use of what we already have, and to get out of the mindset of "we want this, so let's just go get it". The biggest potential obstacle here is how to keep ourselves in fresh food - we don't want to eat canned veggies all the time, and certainly don't plan to resort to powdered milk. I've concluded that, at least for now, we can shop this way and still have fresh food. We are producing all of our own milk and eggs (fresh daily!) and about half of our cheese. Between our garden and the CSA, we should always have fresh vegetables of some kind, and much of our meat is presently being stored on hoof or wing, where it will keep...more or less indefinitely! This means we will have to give up salads after mid-May, or eat zucchini every day for two weeks when we'd rather have broccoli, and sooner or later we'll run out and have to dip into the jars of homemade sauerkraut I put up in January, but that's sort of the point - re-training ourselves to eat what's available. There are a few things that are deal-breakers - things we WILL go get if we run out - medicines, hygiene items and coffee all come to mind. The plan, though, is to do our best to do without things when they're gone, and plan better for next time.

For the past few years I've observed Lent, even though I am not Catholic (or religious at all, really). I find it a worthwhile pursuit to give up something highly valued for awhile. It improves my self-discipline and teaches me to improvise, and to reconsider my needs. This feels to me like simply an expansion of that concept. Rather than doing without one thing, we'll learn to do without whatever we happen to not have, until the next quarterly shopping trip comes around. And we'll live. Meanwhile, we'll buy less overall, and I'll get to stay home more...and nothing makes me happier than that. I mean, when you live here:






Why would you ever want to leave?

when the bread don't rise

Apparently I tried to make bread with some dud yeast. Not one to waste things, I decided I'd try to salvage it by rolling it into thin rounds and baking it as pita bread.



Much to my delight, it worked! I had saved the "almost became chicken food" dough and turned it into something useful. Word.



P. S. - I ground the wheat flour for these by hand with my birthday grain mill. Fresh flour on demand!

canning season

I've been canning like crazy this past week. Not veggies, I'm afraid - we're in that lull where nothing is coming out of the garden. The spring garden petered out long ago and the fall veggies are still tiny. No, this time of year I can soups, stews and sauces. I've made huge batches of spaghetti sauce, beef stew, chili and all kinds of soups. I also stew and can any chickens that might be lurking in the freezer around this time of year (and chicken stock, too). Since there are just two of us at home, I've learned that a quart jar of *whatever* is exactly the right size for one meal. There's nothing nicer than coming in on a freezing cold, windy winter evening after doing chores and splitting wood than popping open a jar of something hot, comforting and homemade.

It feels like money in the bank.

just like my nana's

I now have rhubarb orange jam, just like my Nana's, whenever I want it (or until I eat it all). Well, it's almost just like my Nana's. She packed hers in old quilted crystal jelly jars with tin lids and sealed them with paraffin. These days, we use the canner. Talk about a labor of love.

saved by the bread

It was a good plan, really it was. My mom and I had a solid plan to sell bread, cookies and other baked goods at a local farmers market this weekend. I had loads of bread dough made and got an early start baking this morning. I was ready.

About mid-morning the news came that we would not be setting up at the market after all. An unfortunate oversight prevented us from having all the required permits and paperwork to vend there, so I found myself with a glut of fresh-from-the-oven, still warm bread. It luckily wasn't too much, but it was certainly way more than we'd be able to eat by ourselves. I resigned myself to giving it out as freebies to folks I know, one or two loaves at a time, until it was gone. I was a bit disappointed that I wouldn't be able to sell it, but even worse would be to see it go to waste entirely.

Apparently when you mention you have a boatload of extra bread, people fall all over themselves to take it off your hands. The very first person I tried to give it to told me that she'd pay for it instead. She bought every last loaf I had, and that was before she had even seen it yet! I came home fifty dollars richer and didn't have to spend all morning manning a booth at the farmers market. Mark my words, people - BREAD SELLS ITSELF. Apparently.

gadZUKES!

It's Zukezilla!


(No, we didn't grow this one, someone gave it to us!)

Don't worry, though. I handled it. He won't be back to bother anyone again.

garden update and how to use duck eggs

Well, we turned over the rest of our potatoes and the results were about the same. Just a handful, all small. We had a long period of heavy rain this spring, followed immediately by a long period of very high temperatures. So the pill bugs came, then as soon as they left the fire ants came. Ehhh...maybe next year will be our year for potatoes.

Our beans have mostly tanked in the heat, although we are getting a small quantity of cow peas and limas. The greens are really holding their own, though. The swiss chard is hanging in there and the New Zealand spinach (a heat tolerant variety) is really taking off. We had our first salad of that stuff a couple of nights ago and it was lovely to have salad from the garden again...or anything, for that matter!

In the poultry yard, it turns out that our one adult muscovy duck is our most reliable layer. Normally we'd let her set them, but with no mature male at the moment, we've not much choice but to pick them up. Besides, they're divine! We especially like them boiled, as they have a very smooth, creamy texture. Having grown tired of egg salad (!), I found a new and really wonderful use for them. I urge you to try this at home - even if you don't have access to duck eggs, it would still be good with boiled chicken eggs. Also, feel free to substitute vegetables as they are available. I can imagine this also being delicious with garlic and greens, or onions and zucchini.

SPAGHETTI WITH PEAS AND HARD COOKED EGGS

1 lb spaghetti (or linguini or angel hair)
6 T. butter
1 shallot, minced
1 cup green peas (fresh or frozen)
1 cup freshly grated parmesan
salt and cracked pepper to taste*
2 hard cooked duck eggs (or 3 chicken eggs), peeled and finely minced

Cook pasta as directed and drain, reserving about two cups of the cooking water. Melt butter in the pasta pot over medium heat and saute shallot until just tender. Add pasta and peas back to the pot and toss. Add reserved cooking water in increments until you have a "sauce" consistency you are happy with. Add parmesan, salt and pepper and toss to combine. Serve in deep bowls topped with a generous helping of minced egg. If you have crusty bread and fresh summer tomatoes to serve with this, do so!

*Note: I actually used ZERO salt in this and it tasted great, and I'm not a "no salt" type.

I Heart Popsicles

***Hypocrisy Alert***

For all my "natural" this and "sustainable" that and "self-sufficient" blah blah, I have to confess:

I am a girl who loves a popsicle.

Twin stix, fudgcicles, bomb pops, drumsticks, pop ice...whatever. High fructose corn syrup? Bring it! Red #40? No problem. Guar gum? Where do I sign? Maybe it's my proximity to the equator, maybe my brain is just heat-addled, who knows - but I think that frozen confections might be one of mankind's greatest achievements.

Not that that's saying much. ;-)

Shame On Me.

We caught this guy last night, dining at the Baby Chick Buffet. Seems he'd already been through the line quite a few times.



For days now I've been wondering how the chicks have been disappearing, and why they look so...bad. Not only have their numbers dwindled, but they've been really high strung and scrappy looking, and I just couldn't figure out what the problem was. Turns out the "problem" was a 6-foot rat snake living under the pine shavings in their house. Poor babies. Who knew I was putting them to bed with a monster every night?

Now, before you rake me over the coals, I understand that snakes such as this one are generally a boon. We owe them a debt of gratitude for keeping the rodents in check. I'm afraid, though, that even the most well-meaning critters sometimes overstep boundaries, and eating our livestock is one such circumstance. Since a snake can't very well be reasoned with and asked politely not to dine at our establishment any more, he (she?) had to be dispatched. All the same, there's just nothing like finding something like this at 11:00 pm in boots and a nightgown.

Shame on me also for something else. I realized lately that I've begun to only share our troubles on this blog, and neglect to give our triumphs equal time. Good stuff DOES happen here, and it makes us happy. The goats are thriving, Caspian the Bumble has settled into his role as Protector of the Caprines, the ducks are downright adorable, we have beautiful lettuce in the garden:



We ate some of these homegrown baby greens for dinner, topped with homemade, marinated feta cheese. THAT was quite a triumph, and so satisfying.