Eggs....finally

Our chickens decided to take a break starting last October. I have always refused to put a light on them in the winter as I believe it shortens their life span. Chickens are only made to lay so many eggs in their lifetime and I don't want to rush them through to the end. Now thanks to warm weather and more daylight we started getting eggs over the last few weeks. This last week I have been getting anywhere from 3-7 eggs a day. I am so much happier and the chickens are no longer being threatened with the stock pot.

However we have a layer that needs to get herself straightened out. We have had two enormous eggs in the last 3 days.

This egg weighed in at almost 4 oz and is sitting in a large egg carton next to some normal sized eggs.

I need to post some pictures of my other eggs for everyone to see. We hatched some Buckeye/Ameraucana crosses last year and now I am getting olive colored eggs on top of my blue and brown eggs. It's very exciting (eggciting?) to see all the different colored eggs.

Anyone else have chickens that are finally laying?

One of my friends on facebook had a link to this article a couple of days ago. It really reinforces why I do what I do. Yes farming, even on a small scale, is hard work but the quality of the meat and produce is so much better than anything you can buy in a grocery store.

I agree with Ohiofarmgirl more people need to take control of their food and raise a small garden. get a couple of chicken or if that isn't an option, shop at local farmers markets and support your local businesses.

Updates

It has been a very long time since I posted. Life got in the way and we had a lot of things going on. Biggest thing is that in November we found out we were expecting child number 4 and I got all day morning sickness until about the 5th month. Plus we had swim, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, the holidays, and life just got in the way. I am going to make an effort to post at least 2 - 3 times a week until baby comes. So onto the updates, it's going to be long.

We are expecting baby number 4 in July



And for the most important part, it is a BOY! This will be boy number 3.

Me on the right at 26 weeks

My best friend whom I have know for 29 years is also due with a baby in 2 weeks. We did a maternity picture session and got our pictures taken together so we could remember being pregnant at the same time.

I will talk more about my pregnancy in later posts.

Sunday we went and picked up the newest member of the farm

Our new baby LaMancha

This is my daughters new goat that she will be showing for 4-H. It is a 3 week old mini LaMancha/LaMancha cross doeling, who has been named Ingrid. You will notice that she has a coat on, this is to keep her warm as our nights have been dipping into the 30's and she was very cold the first night.

The first couple of days were tough trying to get her to take a bottle. She seems to be getting the hang of it now and is eating well. Our other 3 goats are still getting used to her and working out the pecking order. Here is a funny picture of them from yesterday, when they all tried to come out of the goat house at the same time.

That is probably a long enough update for today. I will definitely be posting more for awhile, at least until baby boy arrives.

I have some blogging to catch up on, in the meantime I want to remind everyone to get out there and vote!



Photo Credit

 Voting is so important, so many of our forefathers died so that we would have the right to vote. Please don't demean their sacrifice by not voting.

I hope to post some more this week about Halloween, what I've been cooking in the kitchen, and just our lives in general.

Have a great day!

P.s. Can we say yippee that the political ads will now be off the TV, radio, and out of my mailbox!

Weekend Baking

This weekend we had a pumpkin carving party to go to and I had promised to bring a pumpkin roll. I haven't made a pumpkin roll for a couple of years so I needed a good recipe to follow. I stumbled onto a new blog and found the perfect recipe. My pictures aren't the greatest since I forgot about taking pictures until we arrived and all I had were my phone and a dark kitchen. Here is the Pumpkin Roll Recipe I used and some bad pictures.

Pumpkin Roll

Ingredients

For the Cake:

1/4 cup powdered sugar (to sprinkle on towel)
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup pure pumpkin puree

For the Filling:

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
6 tablespoons butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup powdered sugar (optional)

Directions:

1.      Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line a 15 x 10-inch jelly-roll pan with parchment paper and spray with non-stick cooking spray. Sprinkle a clean tea towel with powdered sugar. Set pan and towel aside.

2.      In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice and salt. In a large bowl with an electric mixer, beat eggs, vanilla and sugar until thick. Add in pumpkin and mix to combine. Stir in flour mixture. Spread batter evenly into prepared pan.

3.      Bake for 13 to 15 minutes or until top of cake springs back when touched. Immediately loosen and turn cake onto prepared towel. Carefully peel off paper. Roll up cake and towel together, starting with narrow end. Cool on wire rack.

4.      In a medium bowl, beat cream cheese, powdered sugar, butter and vanilla extract until smooth. Carefully unroll cake; remove towel. Spread cream cheese mixture over cake. Re roll cake. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least one hour.

Notes:

Storage

Store prepared Pumpkin Roll in refrigerator for up to 5 days. You can also wrap tightly in a layer of plastic wrap and then foil and store in freezer for up to one month. Remove frozen Pumpkin Roll to room temperature one hour before serving.

Even though the pictures were bad the pumpkin roll must have been very good as there was 1 slice left. I brought it home so my oldest could have it since he decided to go to a friends house instead of attending the party. I also made some pumpkin brownies, again I found the receipe on the same site. I don't have pictures of these but I do have a few left in the fridge, so maybe I can get one later. Is everyone getting ready to start their holiday baking?

Getting ready for winter

Over the last week we have been finishing up some stuff trying to get ready for winter. I planted garlic and onion sets, we got the meat chickens, and we are trying to get the pool closed. It is supposed to get colder starting Friday so I had to get everything finished up this week. I planted 6, 20' rows over the last two days. The first 5.5 rows were garlic. I ordered my onions and garlic from the D. Landreth Seed Company in September. The first 4 rows are their standard garlic, I have a short section of Elephant Garlic and then I have a row and half of heirloom garlic. The heirloom garlic that I planted consist of 1 package each of Spanish Roja, Inchelium Red, and Asian Tempest. I will let you know how each of the do next year. The only thing I have left to do is put down a layer of straw to mulch my garlic.


Garlic cloves about 4 inches apart



The next row and half were onions. I planted yellow, white, and sweet onions. I planted a little over half the package of both the white and yellow and all of the sweet onions. I will plant the rest of them in the spring.



Onions waiting to be planted



White onion sets

While I was planting Keith (my hubby) was working on the pool. I know the pool should have been closed a month ago but with both kids in band and the competitions on Saturdays we just haven't gotten around to it. He swept it as much as he could, emptied the filter several times to get all of the leaves out and used the net to get some of the leaves off of the bottom. 

Keith sweeping the pool

Tonight when we get home we will put the closing chemicals in and let them circulate while we go to the middle school choir concert and watch our daughter perform with the choir. After they circulate for at least 3 hours we will then drain the pool and put the winter cover on. We may only get it drained tonight and have to put the cover on this weekend. And when I say we I really mean my husband, he has done most of the work on the pool over the summer since he was the one home when they put it in and the installers explained everything to him.

After I finished planting last night I went out to check on the meat chicks. Unfortunately we lost one, but the rest of them were running around peeping and seemed to be just fine. I called Meyer Hatchery this morning and they offered to give me a credit or I could order at least 2 more chicks and they would send me the new order with free shipping. So I ordered 10 more meat chicks that should be here next week on Tuesday! We will be eating really well over the winter with all of the meat chickens in the freezer, plus we have a half hog and half beef coming in the next month.

That's today's update, I hope everyone enjoys the last really warm day we will be having here. It's supposed to be a high of 81 degrees here today! That is a record for my neck of the woods. I know I am going to go take a walk at lunch time and get some sunshine therapy while I can.

Dinner's here!

Last week Meyer Hatchery had their surplus broiler special so I ordered 25 for delivery sometime this week. Well guess what...

I got a call from the post office at 6:30am this morning letting me know that I had chicks and could pick them up anytime. Well that put a crimp in things. My husband and I had planned to ride together to work today because his truck had an issue with the brake caliper getting hot and he wasn't going to be able to get the part until tonight. So we hurried up and got the baby ready to go and dropped him off at the sitters then ran to the post office and picked up the chicks.

Now I really hadn't expected them until at least tomorrow but I thankfully I had the foresight to have my oldest get the brooder ready last night while I was busy planting garlic in the garden. So we were able to zip on home and put the chicks in the brooder, give them so water, and some feed and head to work.

Happy chicks under the heat lamp

Chicks finding the food

Of course when you are in a hurry that is when things go wrong. We heard about an accident going in the other direction on the outerbelt so I wasn't too worried, but then when we got on it was slow going in our direction. Then we passed by one of those new traffic info boards that let us know there were two accidents up ahead so we decided to detour. I finally got my husband dropped off at work at about 8:50am this morning and I got to work about 9:05am. That makes for a long day for us as I won't be able to leave to pick him up until 5pm. Just for comparison I usually drop him off at 7:30-7:45am so we were really late today.

Hopefully all is well with the chicks when I get home. I will have the older kids go out and check on them when they get home from school.