Meet Our New Hens!

Our new ladies:) Five Black Sex-Link hens who lay beautiful brown eggs!

Breuster didn't know what to think of all these new girls!

Our new girls have settled in very well. We're getting 3-4 eggs per day from the 6 hens we have but expect that to increase once they've been here for a while. I love having fresh eggs anytime we need them! They lay such wonderful eggs too. Huge brown eggs with rich yellow/orange yolks. If you haven't had a farm fresh egg, go find your local farmer asap! You are missing out!

My, How Life Changes

Last night, I was talking with my Love about our farm and it hit me. One year ago, if someone would have said "this time next year, you'll be working on your farm" I would have told them they were insane. I really would have thought they were crazy if someone had of told me that 5 years ago! "No, I'm going to have a nice little office job where I don't have to do manual labor" would have been my reply. After working our land, I can't imagine it any other way. Who knew I would go to college to get a business degree and later realize that I couldn't handle one more day of doing that? Sure, there are stresses on a farm...like spending an entire day planting seeds and hoping most of it will come up, wondering if it will ever rain again when you're entire garden is looking brown, or having a stray dog find it's way onto your property while your goats and chickens are loose. And of course, life always throws you curve balls when you have a family but that doesn't even compare to the work stresses I used to face on a daily basis. Now, we just need to get this thing productive so my Love can join me in working this land each day.

Cooking Venison for the First Time

Recently, we acquired some venison (deer meat) and I had to share this recipe. It was the best stew I've ever had. Here is the original recipe from the "I'm Hooked, I'm Game" cookbook:

Hunter's Venison Stew

2 lbs. cubed venison

2 Tbsp. butter or margarine

Salt and Pepper

********

6 carrots

2 large potatoes

3 medium onions

3 stalks celery

1 (28 oz) can crushed tomatoes

In a large deep saucepan over medium-high heat, brown the venison in butter. Season the venison with salt and pepper to taste. Add 2 cups of water and continue to heat until the venison is tender, about 20-30 minutes. 

Meanwhile, peel the carrots and potatoes. Cut the carrots, potatoes, onions and celery into small chunks. Add the vegetables and crushed tomatoes with juice to the venison in the saucepan. Continue to simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes. 

The way I actually fixed it was a little different. I browned the venison as instructed then placed it in the crockpot with the water, 3 carrots, 5-6 potatoes (my men are meat and potato guys!), 1 large onion, 1-2 stalks of celery, and 2 cans of diced tomatoes. It still turned out GREAT! I cooked it on low for about 8 hours until everything was tender.

Feel free to post your favorite venison recipes in the comments! I'd love to know how other folks enjoy their game!

A Productive Year

You may be wondering how our little farm turned out this year and if your not, I'm going to tell you anyway.

Animals:

We started out with the opportunity to get one free chicken from my kid's school. When we went to buy feed for it, we got 6 free chicks with our purchase. Turns out only one out the seven was a hen. We wanted multi-purpose chickens (meat and laying hens) anyway but we were hoping for at least half of them to be hens. Looks like we won't have to buy chicken for a few months now. In case you haven't been around chickens, having 6 roosters is a BAD thing. They will brutally kill your hen...not on purpose of course but they all want in on the action and it is a constant battle. All of them were getting along fine until a few weeks ago when the roosters must have sensed it was about time for little miss hen to start laying eggs. She is now comfortably in the garage until we can thin out our roosters. Not pleasant but a must unless you like to watch your flock hurt one another.

A few weeks ago, we acquired a goat. Sweet Ms. Daisy joined our farm. We are looking forward to the future when we can add in a few more goats. My parent's used to have some as pets which always seemed kind of strange to me. Now I understand.

Gardening:

This was my first year raising a garden and I think we did pretty good! We definitely learned a lot but had a considerably productive year. There was a fierce battle with tater bugs, then some major destruction from the crows, and finally whatever bug it was that likes beans. Even with these issues, we still managed to freeze almost 20 quarts of corn and 5-6 quarts of green beans. We should have enough potatoes to get us and our family through the winter. I'm already missing the fresh squash and cucumbers but we'll have more of that next year. The tomatoes did the best of any I've ever grown, not enough to can but we had just the right amount for sandwiches and salads throughout the summer. We still have a few green ones that are slowly ripening as we speak! I'm going to miss the fresh tomatoes this winter. 

Future:

Next year, we're doubling the size of both of our gardens which will make it a total of  around 9000 square feet of garden! Whew, that's going to be a lot of work but it's the best work I've ever done. Nothing feels better than to come in and be tired from working your land. We're also hoping to start fencing in our property so we can add animals to the herd at any time. This is a daunting task that may or may not happen next year. Maybe 3 years from now we will have it complete. Also, in the spring, we are ordering hens instead of playing Russian Roulette at the feed store.

Thanks for keeping up with our little farm this year! I'll leave you with a few of my favorite pictures from the year...

Investing in All Kennebec's Next Year!

I was absolutely amazed when I dug of some of our Kennebec potatoes today! We're not quite ready to plow them all up but I walk through every few days as some of them over grow their space in the ground, some the rain washes the dirt off, and our chickens have dug around and revealed a few. Recently, we've been digging up the Yukon Gold's since the plants died off well over a month ago, thanks in part to those nasty Colorado Potato Bugs (see a previous post about those little night mares). The Yukon Gold's died out a good 3 weeks before the Kennebec's even showed signs of distress. Being our first year of gardening, I started digging a few of the Yukon Gold's up every few days not knowing how long they could be left after the plant died. Most of them have been smaller than a child's fist. Even now, when I dig some up, they haven't grown anymore. Well, not those Kennebec's. Let me show you what I dug up today!

Left: Yukon Gold     Right: Kennebecs!

Those were all dug up today. That Tweetsie card is the same size as a credit card! I was so impressed! That's bigger than most baking potatoes you buy at the store...which are probably sprayed with who knows what! Am I impressed with the way our garden's have turned out? Absolutely!

Books: A Great Guide to Living Off the Land

My wonderful mother gave me an amazing gift this week, a book, rather a guide to living off the land. Country Wisdom & Know-How: Everything You Need to Know to Live Off the Land is full of useful knowledge when attempting to become self-sufficient!

It is broken down into six sections: Animals, Cooking, Crafts, Gardening, Health and Wellbeing, and Home. Each section provides a wealth of knowledge from curing acute health problems naturally to raising livestock, building a root cellar to baking bread. It's amazing. The information this book provides is exactly what I need. Even if you don't plan on living off the land to the extreme, there is a wealth of knowledge that can help you from day to day. In my opinion, every person who picks this book up will learn at least one useful thing they can use.