The Fall Harvest?

Hello, ya'll....Deliverance here....

I know it has been a long time but I have been really busy. On what you ask? Fighting to make all that work in my garden worth something before the season is over. Now I usually have no big problems with my garden. I am up to my elbows in tomatoes by now and have so much canning done by now that Frederick and I have had with the whole busy by now. Not the case this year.
It seems that the gardening fairies were working against me this year. No matter what I tried nothing seemed to matter. I have canned 9 quarts of tomatoes this year and those were given to me by a friend of mine. It seems that it was a good year for some(*%$@#*)!!! What you see above is the first good harvest of tomatoes I have gotten this year. I have more coming but the question is will they ripen before the first frost.
Let me back up a bit here and let you know that it was a long winter this year and I didn't even get started on the garden until mid-May which around here is very late. And then it went from very cold to very hot almost over night which is not good for a healthy garden. It seemed that the seedling were just getting started when the sun would hit them with close to 100 degrees and they didn't have a snowballs chance in hell of getting thru the day. I spent alot of time re-seeding. Spinach...died. Squash...suffered badly. Green beans...not bad...have canned 18 quarts. Potatoes...not sure at this point, but the plants never got very big. Beets...big question there, I'll know in a week or so. Same for carrots but at least they look like very healthy plants. And then there are the tomatoes...which after 2 months some of the plants never got out of sproutsville before they would die.
Now don't get me wrong I am so grateful for what I have managed to harvest, it is just not the harvest I am use to. So now I am ready for this season to be over with so that I can start working on next year. There will be some changes in how the garden is planned, planted, and prepared for planting. More chicken coop cleaning, more sand to get this clay work into a nice soil, and tilled at least twice before the first snow flys. "And as God is my witness, I will never be hungry again" Sorry, my alter-ego, Scarlet O'Hare, just stepped in but I think she is gone for now.
On another note, for all of you who care...That is Barney in the background. His is a very healthy rooster and learning how hold his own with the "ladies". But he does live on the back porch and probably always will, the other chickens know that he is not whole and they are a bit funny about these things. He is a very well taken care of rooster. He comes to the back door just about sun down and either Frederick or myself will bring him in to sit on the couch and watch television a while before we put him in his house for the night. I mean a well rounded rooster has to stay on top of current events, Right?
Mama has given us four more chicks. I think she is one of those Moms that loves to have babies around so she just keeps hatching them out. Bertha, our biggest hen, hatched out two of her own. And she had a serious change in attitude, very protective. And Dolly has one new one and still sitting on a clutch of 8 more eggs so we will see what comes of that. I really think that Mama is a good influence on the rest of the flock. And this also means that I may not have to incubate next year. Which may not work for me...I also like having babies around...baby chicks that is!

Well, that it all for now. I will try to let you know how the rest of the harvest goes as long as I don't slip into a depression or have Scarlet take over my life.
Love ya'll..Deliverance

Pie, Pie, Apple Pie

Fall is here and, to me, that means more cooking than usual, and making exclamations of joy whenever I see an apple or a pumpkin. In accordance with autumn spirit, the apple tree in the back of my house, which did not produce at all last year, was graced with a few apples this season, just enough to make a pie.

Now I have to explain a little bit about how I feel about pie.

Pie is magic.

Being initiated into the art of it's creation is a right of passage. Practices of making pie, especially pie crust, vary widely, but once one's method of pie making has been perfected, innovations in pie making technique are met with skepticism and/or outright hostility.

Consider this: I am usually mild mannered and polite when meeting new people, and I am not given to bouts of rude obstinacy. Unless you insult my pie. I found this out during a Pinot Noir tasting party, where I was explaining my pie crust technique to a culinary minded friend. Another guest at the party overheard and made the mistake of telling me that my described pie crust was subpar because it was made with only butter and not shortening.

I rolled my eyes. "Butter is better because it provide superior taste and browning. Shorting give a great texture, but it just doesn't taste as good." I told him. He shook is head patronizingly. "My grandmother," he intoned, "makes the best pie crust. And has won numerous state pie competitions with her recipe. So her pie crust is better than yours."

"Don't talk to me about pie crust that you don't even make when you haven't EVEN TASTED MY PIE CRUST!" I shouted. And granted, I should have just let his comments slide, but I had had three glasses of wine and this was PIE CRUST, man. This was personal.

He tried to argue it with me a little longer, but I refused to back down. Finally I glared at him until he looked away. We didn't speak the rest of the night. Take that, pie insulter!


Ok, down to business. I did try a slightly new variation on my crust when I made my apple pie last week. I used a slightly higher ratio of butter to flour and I really liked the results. I've never made a more flaky crust. The extra butter idea came from the gal who does the smittenkitchen blog. Here's her recipe with my tweakings:

2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (8 ounces, 16 tablespoons or 1 cup) unsalted butter, very cold

Whisk the flour and salt together in a chilled bowl and then cut in the butter with a chilled pastry cutter. Do NOT use a food processor. If at any point while you're working in the butter it starts to feel warm or greasy, stash it in the freezer for a few minutes. You want it to stay as cold as possible during the whole process. Once the butter is in little crumbs in the flour (with some big crumbs left), add cold water, one tablespoon at a time until the dough just comes together. Stash in the fridge or freezer until the dough is firm and you're ready to roll it out.

It really helps to have a chilled marble pastry board to roll the dough out on, but if you don't have one just use the counter and try to work quickly. The colder the dough stays, the flakier it will be in the end.

Roll out the bottom crust, line your pie pan with it and fill with a mixture of peeled sliced apples, cinnamon, vanilla, a dash nutmeg and sugar to taste. Dot the filling with some extra butter. Roll out the top crust, lay it over the filling and crimp the edges to seal. Cut some holes for steam to escape (or use a heart shaped cookie cutter when you roll the top crust out if Martha Stewart inexplicable takes possession of your soul, the way she does with mine). This pie crust recipe makes more than enough for 9 in pie. I wrapped the extra dough in plastic wrap and stuck it in the freezer for a rainy day.


Bake pie at 400 degrees for twenty minutes, then lower the heat to 350 and bake for another 40 to 50 minutes, until pie is brown and your neighbors start dropping by to investigate what smells so good.

Feed the pie to good friends and enjoy the tuning of the seasons. Winter will be here before we know it!

Squash Casserole . . . Sort-Of

Earlier today I had some gorgeous zucchini in my fridge. It was from the farmer's market so it was fresh, luscious and impeccably healthy. There was only one problem with it; I had no interest in eating it. Honestly, I was really just craving a big bowl of pasta with meat sauce. But, I decided it's probably a sin to let farmer's market produce wither in the fridge uneaten, so I set about trying to find a way to make it palatable.

Now, Deliverance makes a mean squash casserole and by "mean" I mean I could eat the entire pan of it myself, given half the chance. I called her up and asked the basic ingredients. She said: "squash, cooked rice, onion, garlic, green chile, bacon and cream of mushroom soup." Great, I thought! Let's make this thing! Then I realized I had another problem: I didn't have any green chile or cream of mushroom soup. I thought about making a white sauce to substitute for the soup, but I didn't have any milk or cream.

Oh well! Time to wing it!

Here are the instructions for my version. Amounts of ingredients are approximate, since I wasn't measuring anything.

Five minutes before your piano lesson, boil water and pour it over the collection of rice that you found in little baggies in your cupboard. Spill rice all over stove. Leave it there and go teach your lesson. By the time your lesson is over, the rice will be nice and cooked. If it isn't, boil it for a while, then drain.

Semi-defrost your bacon. Claw at the solid mass of it until you get three slices off . Cut them into chunks and brown them in a skillet. Remove bacon and try not to eat all of it. Pour off most of the bacon fat (save it!) and in the same pan, throw the not-too-sad remains of half an onion, chopped, along with two minced garlic cloves. Remember that you have some mild shoshito peppers in the fridge (ah, farmer's market) and chop those up and add them to the onions. Once the veggies are brown, remove them from the skillet. Add two tablespoons of bacon fat back to the skillet, along with two tablespoons of flour. Whisk and cook until golden. then add one cup of chicken broth and simmer, stirring occasionally, until thick. Then whisk in the 1/4 cup of cream cheese that came with a bagel you got the other day. Slice your squash and mix all the veggies and the rice together in a casserole dish. Grate 1/2 cup manchego cheese into the mix. Grind lots of pepper and salt over everything, then pour the sauce over it and mix it up again. Dot the top with bacon and grate some Parmesan cheese over it (you used up all the manchego already). Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until the squash is tender.

This was really good, but if I were to make it again I would make a larger amount of sauce; the casserole wasn't dry, but it could have been better with more goo.

Breakfast of Champions. Or, Alternately, Mach 4 with Her Hair on Fire

Willfull and Deliverance here. Today was a very special day because Willfull beat her record time for running a mile. Previously, the fastest mile she'd run had been completed in 7 minutes and 23 seconds, but this morning she wittled that time down to 7 minutes and 9 seconds!

To celebrate Willfull's accomplishment, Deliverance made chocolate chip strawberry pancakes! Breakfast of champions! The pancake batter recipe is included at the end of the post. Here's the visual instructions:

Pour your batter into little circles on your griddle. Then sprinkle them with sliced strawberries and chocolate chips. Preferably big chocolate chips. Preferable big Ghiradelli chocolate chips.

Then flip your cakes over. See if you can take a picture of one of the cakes in mid-air.

Put them on a plate with butter, maple syrup (the real stuff, not that corn syrup with the yucky colors), bacon and a strawberry cut into the shape of a fan. Then eat!

And now for the recipe...

3 cups all-purpose flour

3 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

1 egg

around a quarter cup of vegetable oil

and enough milk to make a nice pourable batter.

I know that it may seem that I should made something a bit more calorie conscience but you must remember that she had just worked off enough calories to cover two of these breakfast...don't you think? Besides everyone needs a bit of chocolate and strawberries in their life every now and again!!

Singing off for now. Love you! BYE!!

Deliverance & Willfull

My Name is Willful and I'm a Tomato-Plantaholic

Willful here and I have a problem. My problem is that I anthropomorphize my plants. I give them names and talk to them and ask them if they're having a good day. When I get home from work I check on them before going inside my house. Last year, when a hail storm flattened the top halves of my monster early girl tomato plants I actually cried.

So today I went to the nursery because I had room for one more tomato plant in my garden. I was anticipating picking out a new plant and wondering what I would get. Would it be an heirloom? A large salad tomato? Well I walked into the green house and immediately spotted an early girl variety tomato that was practically busting out of its small container. Its branches were full and leafy and already laden with a few golfball sized green fruit. "Mine!" I said, happily picking up my new friend and turning to walk to the check out counter.

Then I saw them.

Rows upon rows of healthy tomato plants. All lined up under pictures of what the tomatoes would look like from each plant and descriptions of how each one would taste.

Uh oh. Well . . . maybe I could squeeze in one more plant?

But the harder I looked the more difficult the decision became. Did I want one of the Purple Russians, which yields a tomato so dark it almost looks black? Or maybe an orange variety, high in vitamin C? The list went on. I was having serious trouble.

I finally decided on an "Amy's Sugar" plant which advertised "juicy 2 oz. golf balls as sweet as candy." But then I saw the Brandywine plants which yield tomatoes that are "surprisingly large and can weigh up to 2 pounds." Sold! I took one of each.

And then, because once I start buying plants I can't stop, I picked out some eggplants and a few strawberries to put in a hanging basket.

Here are some of the plants I've amassed so far. The tomato at the heading of this post is my new early girl friend. I've decided to call her Punctual.

First zucchini of the season!

Hanging strawberry basket:


Love,
Willful

Hi ya'll.....Deliverance here.

Well the farm is busy. Let's start with the garden and those beautiful strawberries! My first handful and they are sweeties. They are coming along very nicely and they are an early variety so they won't be around very long. So we pick and freeze until we get the whole crop in or we get enough to make that wonderful jam that everyone loves to get in their care packages. So ya'll get ready, there will be a nice crop this year! On the bigger scale is the regular garden. I was very late this year getting it in the ground due to some other business that needed my attention but it turned out to be a good thing this year because the weather has been very hot and cold. Even with the delay it is going along very nicely. Beans, peas, carrots, lettuce, beets, spinach, radishes, pumpkins, melons, squash, cucumbers, and don't forget the tomatoes, my garden it not complete without the tomatoes. I have a very large problem surviving the winter if I don't have enough tomatoes canned and waiting for me to put them in my soup, make a sauce for pasta, or just warm them up and lightly season...yummy! Made myself hunger there, sorry I'll try to get thru this first...! Everything is coming up (along with the weeds!) and looking great. So I'm very excited for a big crop this year and a long canning season.

And now for your chicken update......
I released the youngin's into the general population on Saturday and what a release. I now have chickens everywhere. It is so cool to have hatched these from eggs and watched and helped them grow big enough to run with the big chicks! Saturday was slow going them really where not sure what to do with that open gate and it took most of the day for them to get very brave. The older chickens had no problem go in the nursery to visit the teenagers but there was no blood shed which is a good thing because it is hard to change a chickens mind once they remember they have a mind. By Sunday morning everyone was running free like they have been doing it all along. I also let "Mama" and her babies out of their hutch for the first time and that was interesting. "Mama" is the best hen I have and she hatch out three babies and they have been living in the hutch for the past month. "Mama" was getting a bit restless the last few days and I just decided that I would let her out, leaving the babies to grow a bit more. She thought better of leaving the babies behind. She wasn't out more than a second before she was calling the babies out as well. Some of the older hens were not happy about her being out with the babies. Again no bloodshed but it was a little scary for a bit. Hens get chesty with each other and a lot of clawing when things are changed and they get uncomfortable. "Mama" set them straight and peace reigned the coop! And then there is the matter of Goober, Billy Bob, and Barney....not an easy situation...It took me a while to decide what to do. Goober and Billy Bob are normal (if there is such a thing) and would have no problem being part of the flock. The problem is Barney with the bum leg...he would not last long out with the rest of the flock...chicken kill the weakest or anything that they think is unwell. So I had to make a pretty hard decision,the choices were take the chance that the flock would accept him, twist his neck (the Doc's words), or move him on the porch and finish raising him as a pet. Everyone knows what I did...Goober and Billy Bob are doing great with the rest and Barney is learning to live on his own on the porch. It will be a long road but I think Barney and I will become famous buddies and he will learn to follow me around in the yard and garden and he can live a long life being the "worlds most pampered chicken". By the way I have no idea if this is a hen or rooster. My luck runs towards the rooster but we will see.

I will sign off here. Happy Spring to everyone and good night~
Deliverance

Canoe Cake

Ok. Wilful here. I've posted about my "Cavecakes", which are cupcakes with giant sinkholes in the middle. Now I've got to tell you about Canoe Cake, which is a loaf cake that does the same thing.

The first time I made Canoe Cake it turned out beautifully: golden brown and moist, with a perfectly risen high dome. There were no witnesses to this miracle as I ate almost the whole loaf by myself. The second time I made the cake, something went terribly wrong.
The cake is question is from Nigella Lawson's book "How to be a Domestic Goddess." She calls it Lemon Syrup Loaf Cake and it's divine, even when it sinks so much that a tiny person could sit in the middle of the loaf and paddle the cake around a small lake.

After examining the recipe many times I think my problem is that I'm not using cake flour. Nigella specifies "Self rising cake flour", which is just too British to find in America with any ease. I found a conversion online for how to make your own and the first time I made the recipe I used cake flour combined with baking powder. Every time after that I've used regular flour because I haven't had any cake flour around. If you make this cake I would recommend you use cake flour. I'm going to try that next time and I'll post about how it turns out.
Anyway, this is a fantastically delicious cake that you should make. If it sinks in the middle like mine did, just cut it up into cubes, layer it with whipped cream and fruit and call it a trifle. No one will know it came out of the oven looking like a canoe.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 Cup butter, unsalted
  
• 1/2 Cup + 1 Tbls. Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• Zest of one Lemon
• 1 Cup plus 1 Tablespoon self rising cake flour OR 1 Cup + 1 Tablespoon Cake flour mixed with 1 1/2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
• Pinch Salt
• 4 Tablespoons Milk

For the Syrup:

• 4 Tablespoons Lemon Juice
• 1/2 Cup Sugar
• Fresh Thyme Sprigs (Optional)

Preheat oven to 350. Butter a loaf pan and line it with parchment paper (NOT WAX PAPER). Cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs and lemon zest. Add flour and salt and then mix in the milk. Bake cake for 45 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.
While cake is baking, make the lemon syrup: boil the lemon juice and sugar together until the sugar has dissolved completely. if you like, strip some leaves off of from fresh Thyme springs and add the to syrup while it's cooking. These will add a light herbal scent to the cake.

Now for the fun part: poke the cake all over with a skewer or chopstick. Pour the syrup over the cake and let it cool while the lemony goodness soaks in.

SPRING IS FINALLY HERE! I HOPE...

Hey ya'll...Deliverance here.

I can not believe how long winter has been this year. It is the third of May and usually by now I have my garden in and spending most of my time fighting back the weeds (and not winning!), but this year I have tomato starts in the garage to be hardened off so I might be able to plant this coming weekend. Last weekend Frederick managed to get the garden tilled up between rain and snow storms. God love him! He is such a great help around here. We normally would have it tilled for a couple of weeks and watering about every other day to get the weeds started so he could till them under again and that helps to keep them down. This year I don't know how much this is going to help, I think I'm more worried about the last frost, which I hope has past. Today is beautiful...80 degrees...sunshine...blue skies...and those spring breezes! Just fantastic weather. So I guess that tomorrow will snow about 6 inches and I will have to find my overcoat again! But enough of that....

Life on the farm is going along at its normal pace for the most part. I have moved the toddler- chicks out to the "nursery" so they can start getting use to seeing those big hens and big roosters. They spend alot of time in their coop not real sure about the other critters on the other side of that fence. I would imagine that in a couple of more weeks those other critters won't seem so big anymore and they will start getting a bit braver.

I took Barney, Goober, and Billy Bob out to the fresh tilled garden for a field trip. They have had a blast all day long. This is the first time they feet have been dirty and they were none too happy at first. I have very spoiled chicks around here. But they warmed up to the idea and started to act like chickens, it is so hard to see your children grow up, and chickens do it fast! They too are not sure about those other critters but they seem less worried about them. Of course these chicks have been around Jake the dog and Zipper the cat so another chicken is really no big deal and besides Mom would not let anything happen to us! Right? I really don't know what I am going to do with the trio. Goober and Billy Bob could probably be put in with the rest of the flock once they get some size on them, but Barney would not fair so well with that bum leg. I called Doc last week and ask him if he ever set a chicken's leg before or maybe it would be better to amputate, but he never called me back. So I figure that he is still laughing at me or the question put him in the ground. Doc has been a Godsend around here but the chicken question may have put him over the edge. I mean there is only so much a Doc can do right? Well, we keep him on his toes with this band of misfits we have around here.

Well, I had better get my butt in gear and get some dinner on before the boss gets home. That soup that Willful made sure looked good. I made some pork broth last week so maybe I will use that and make a nice homemade soup and fresh bread. Willful you have saved me again with your great ideas. That is it for now. Ya'll have a great evening and I'll be back soon.

Deliverance

Chicken Broth as a Sign of What's Wrong with the World

It seems quite sadistic to write about making chicken broth after we've written so many posts about hatching baby chicks. Still, this is the farm, where life comes and goes and where cute fuzzy babies eventually grow up and become someone's dinner.

Anyway, my problem with chicken broth started yesterday when I realized that I had the remains of a roasted bird in the fridge that needed to be dealt with in one way or another. I decided stock was the way to go, but I'd never actually made broth before. I had a vague notion that it involved covering a chicken carcass and some vegetables with water and boiling the whole thing until it magically transformed into soup. Still, I thought I would see what Martha Stewart had to say about the subject, since she is my go to mentor for complicated-recipes-I-want-to-make-despite-my-better -judgment.

However, Martha's chicken broth, astounded me, not with its inclusion of one and a half pounds of chicken "backs", but with it's specification for 12 cups of canned chicken broth. I've included the link here, if you don't believe me.

Why would you endeavor to make homemade broth if you were in possession of twelve cups of the canned variety? I know, I know . . . I'm sure stock made with stock is one heck of a potent brew, but surely it's completely counter to the point of broth.

For eons, people have simmered the bony remains of their dinners, drawing out the last traces of nutrients from the inedible gristle of a carcass. Isn't broth a sort of culinary alchemy? A something from almost-nothing that's sustained countless cave people and frugal housewives? Making broth from broth seems about as wasteful as buying a new dress only to rip the seams and sew yourself a new one. Perhaps you would make one heck of a gown, but wouldn't it have been more ultimately satisfying to pull a Scarlet and use the curtains?

I rejected Martha's recipe with disgust, opting instead to rely on intuition and the ghosts of several food network shows that had been imbued into my brain. Here's my broth recipe:

Ingredients:

• One chicken carcass (having some meat still attached is good)
• Two carrots hacked into barbarically uneven chunks
• Three stalks of celery, cut up (if you have any stalks with leaves, throw them in too)
• One onion, peeled and quartered
• Some herbs (fresh parsley, springs of rosemary and thyme, whatever you have)

Throw everything in a pot, add water to cover and bring to a boil. Turn down to a simmer and cook for three hours or until everything falls apart and it tastes good. Skim off any nasty foamy stuff as it boils and add salt to taste. Separate out the chicken and veggies, strain the broth through a fine sieve (or a tea strainer, whatever) and add any chicken meat back to the broth.

Here's the chicken and escarole soup I eventually made with my broth. With some buttered french bread it was even good enough for Martha.



Love,
Wilful

More Chicken Business

Deliverance and Willful here. We took out the old 8 milimeter camera today and shot some footage of all the chicken babies. Wilful's playing the old honkytonk in the background. Enjoy!

Love,

Willful and Deliverance

Indoor Gardening Experiments

Here are some potatoes I got from my grandmother, who is Deliverance's mom. They got a little to excited for spring and started to grow right in Nana's kitchen! I knew they just needed some soil, water, sun and a little loving care and they would grow into fine plants someday.

I took them home and cut them up so that each piece of potato had an "eye" in it. The eyes are the little dimples that make peeling potatoes a pain in the butt, but they're where the potato will send out roots when it starts to germinate. I planted all of the eyes in a tray planter in my kitchen and waited to see if they would grow.


After a few weeks some little green leaves shot out of the soil! The window sill in my kitchen is a warm, sunny place and the potatoes liked it there, even when it was snowing outside.

It's not quite safe to plant them outside yet because of frost dangers, but I decided to bring the little tater tots outside today to soak up some full on sunshine. In a few weeks I'll be able to plant them outside and hopefully they will make lots and lots of potatoes for me to eat. In the meantime they're taking over my kitchen and averting their eyes while I'm making french fries.

I've decided to call them all "Papa", because papa in Spanish can mean either "Potato" or "The Pope" and I'm all one for ambiguity between religion and vegetables.

Love,
Wilful

All The Critters Update

Well, here we are three weeks later and it has been a most trying week filled with alot of emotions. Last Sunday we lost our turkey hen Tomasita. And we are really not sure why, just found her dead when we went out to feed. Very strange really, never really sure why these things happen.

On Wednesday, Meara lost her battle with a condition known as "fatty liver" caused by her being so overweight most of her life. We had been giving her a buch of herbs and a steroid to see if we couldn't turn her around. Plus the Doc had been here a couple of times to do an IV and also to tube her to get something in her stomachs and hopefully jump start them but she just couldn't get past it I guess and we lost her. It still hard to go out and feed because I still expect to hear her complain that I am not moving fast enough for her or she wants to go to the pasture. I really miss her a bunch.

But the life cycle never stops around here. Also on Wednesday we started hatching out chicks. It is the most fantastic adventure I have ever been witness to. I did my part...three weeks of keeping them warm and humid and rolled 3 times a day up to the last week and then I just stood back and held my breathe while I waited and watched ...never really sure this was even going to work. And then it happened...one egg started to peep! There was no cracks or holes but you could hear the chick peeping before it even started on the egg. It was amazing to find this out and then to watch as they work so hard to get out of the shell.

I would see the beginning of a hole and then a crack and then a wing or leg and then there they were...all wet and just exhausted from the hours of work to get out. And I mean hours, Frederick and I would go to bed at night and there would be a couple of eggs just starting to crack and when we come down in the morning the chicks are still wet so we know they haven't been out of the egg more than just a few minutes. We now have twenty more of the cutest mouths to feed you ever did see. In fact I am sitting with the newset on my lap while I type this.

These chicks have gone from the comforts of the kitchen where we could keep an eye on them and make sure they get ever chance to survive, to the bathroom where they are now kept warm under a brooder light in a nice wooden box. Once they get feathered out and it warms a bit they will then move to the small coop when George once lived so I can still keep on eye on them but they won't be "parfuming" the house. And then once they get big enough to defend themselves they will be moved out to the "nursery". This a small section of the coop yard that is fenced off from the rest of the flock in order to introduce them to the rest of the family without fear of injury. It works pretty good, they get used to seeing each other and when I let them all go at once the other chickens are so overwhemled that they usually won't bother the new ones too much.

Well, I guess that is all for now. I need to give Frederick a hand will the night feeding and then get him feed. And I supose this chick is probably ready to meet the rest of the family. So until next time....

ALL THE CRITTERS

Hi Ya'll! Deliverance here with news from the farm.



We are trying to hatch them beautiful eggs this spring. I have 40 eggs in the incubator and we are at day 7 of 21, so right now it is just a matter of turning them 2-3 times a day and making sure there is enough water in there to create some nice humidity. I am very eager to see how many I can hatch this way. I have a couple of hens that don't mind "sittin'" but that is usually after the weather warms a bit more. Right now they are just interested in the two rooster I have left after killing time.



I had 6 roosters thru the winter, they were young and didn't bother the hens too much during the colder months but once it started to warm up a bit it seem like they were "hell bent for glory" and chased everything that moved!! Well, you know, after a while the hens started to show the wear and after one of my setters got hurt and died that was all she wrote for them. So now we are down to two roosters. Stumpy is a white and black Easter Egger, very large, good looking rooster that got hurt when he was just a chick and Frederick (my better half) nursed him back. He walks with a slight limp but that don't slow him down none. And then there is Woody. Woody is a Spanish Gold that wears a very large head of feathers that go in every direction. We call him the "Rock Star" because of all the feathers and if he ever grows his tail feathers back he will be a beautiful bird (and look more balanced as well). It would seem that all those roosters were a bit jealous of Woody plummage and made sure it didn't stick around long, even his headdress is looking better these days. Woody and Stumpy are very happy without all the competition and they have all those pretty hens!! Hopefully they are fertile roosters and we have a bunch of babies this year.

If you will all remember back to the first blog that Willfull posted, you will recall a rooster by the name of George. George is no longer with us on the farm. He has moved to greener pastures as they say. I raised George from a hatchling, carried him around in my bra or pocket when I was outside working the garden or what have you. He had become quite a large part of life around here and I do miss him a bunch. I don't hear the other roosters in the morning as well as I heard George because George had his own house up on the back porch. He was a very well cared for bird. And now he is gone. I had given one of the neighbor boys a couple of hens last year, they were sisters and were always together. Well one of them past away a few weeks later and "Goldie" was left to be alone thru the winter and of course being raised the way he was George couldn't be put in the regular coop with the rest of them birds. He wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes in there. So he has moved in with Goldie and could not be happier. Yeah, I know, it is silly to miss a bird with as many as I have around here but I just got used to him crowing at 4:30 in the morning and all day long for that matter! It got so I would have to take him out of his house in the morning and put him in the garden during the day so he wasn't digging up all my flower beds. And now with spring coming on I need the garden, of course, so I was going to have to find a place for him anyway. This way it is a win all the way around. George gets a new home with Goldie and I get my garden back. I do miss him talking to me all day tho! But he and Goldie are doing well and we are hopeful that they will start their own flock!



Well I had better get this day started, it is almost day break and there are chores to do. I hope that you have enjoyed this conversation with me and will be back soon. Willfull and I do enjoy the farm and sharing it with you. Willful, I hope you are having a great time and hurry home from your adventure. I miss ya!! Until next time....

Chocolate Pie, PS

Hi Y'all! The chocolate pie is amazingly tasty, but it doesn't hold together too well when you try to cut it. So only serve it to forgiving company that will happily tuck into little piles of pie.

Chocolate Pie!

Hi, Wilful here.

I'm about to leave the country for twelve days and go to Argentina. You know what that means! Chocolate cream pie time! Actually, it's pretty much always chocolate cream pie time around here.

Here's a recipe that will knock your socks off. If you don't want pie, just make the filling, refrigerate it and call it chocolate pudding. "Hey, Chocolate Pudding! Come over here so I can eat you!" Ha ha, "call it", get it? Err, never mind . . .

For crust

• 1 1/3 cups graham cracker crumbs
  
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1/4 cup sugar

For filling

• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 large egg yolks
• 3 cups whole milk
• 7 oz chocolate, melted (you can use a combo of bittersweet and unsweetened or all bittersweet)
  
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

For topping

• Whip cream! Either out of a can or whipped from scratch.
  

Directions:


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix the ingredients for the crust together and pat them into a pie pan. Bake until crisp, about 18 minutes. (The white spot in the middle of mine is a lump of sugar that didn't incorporate well. It's not mold. I promise.)


Mix the sugar, cornstarch, salt and egg yolks in a heavy sauce pan. Whisk them until it forms a big lump in the middle of your whisk. That's what it did for me anyway. Then pour the milk in a steady stream, whisking all the time. Bring to a boil over medium high heat, whisking all the while. When it's boiling, turn the heat down to low and cook for one minute, still whisking. it will be very thick! Turn off the heat.



Then pour in your melted chocolate, add the butter and vanilla and whisk until smooth.

Put a piece of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the filling so it won't form a skin. Set the pot in a bowl full of ice water until the filling is cool. This will take about 45 minutes. Pour it into your prepared shell. Taste it too. It's REALLY good.


Ok, stop tasting it! Smooth what's left in the shell until it looks like chocolate pie. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and set this in the fridge for 6 hours or until your company comes, whichever happens soonest. Top with whipped cream and serve! My whip cream is coming with my company, so I don't have a pic of that. I'll post one later if I can.


Share and enjoy!

More Room for the Good Stuff

Sometimes things don't go as planned, even on the farm.

This morning I made chocolate cupcakes for my grandma's 92nd birthday. I carefully altered the recipe to account for high altitude by adding more liquid, less baking soda, more flour, less sugar and by increasing the baking temperature by 25 degrees. However, despite my best efforts, the cupcakes all sunk in the middle and turned into cavecakes.

This doesn't bother me too much because the little hollows can be filled with frosting. I think Deliverance would agree with me that the whole point of cupcakes is that they are a vehicle for frosting. More room for frosting = a good thing.

Deliverance and I like to see the positive side of everything.

Here are some pics with the final recipe for the cupcakes at the bottom. I'll post the frosting recipe later.

Sad looking cavecake, longing for frosting:

Happy cupcake, topped with strawberry frosting, a strawberry heart and two mint leaves:

Chocolate Cupcakes With More Room for the Good Stuff
This recipe is courtesy of Cavleen and includes high altitude changes.

Ingredients
3/4 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup boiling water
1 cup + 4 Tbls. buttermilk
1 cup canola oil
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups minus 4 Tbls. sugar
2 cups + 2 Tbls. flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Directions

1. Mix cocoa and boiling water. Set aside to cool.
2. Mix buttermilk, oil, eggs and vanilla together.
3. Mix dry ingredients together.
4. Mix dry ingredients into buttermilk/oil mixture.
5. Mix in cocoa mixture.
6. Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit in lined cupcake pans.
7. Bake until tester comes out clean, approximately 15 minutes.

Makes about 24 cupcakes.

About the Farm

If you follow the railroad tracks out of Santa Fe and keep following them far, far to the south, you might notice a small farm just off the side of the tracks. Approaching this farm your shins might be scuffled by an aggressive but beautiful rooster named George, or you might be followed by a limping cat named Zippy who's meows sound a bit like a goat. If you were to walk around the back of this farm you might see a garden (teaming with tomatoes and marigolds in the summer) and a brambly blackberry patch (watch out for those thorns!). If you do find this magical place, congratulations! You've found The Farm.

A lot of cookin' and cannin' takes place here on the farm and a lot of shenanigans. Deliverance and I would like to share them with you. My name's Wilful and I hope ya'll enjoy our bloggin'.

Deliverance and I are related by blood, but what holds us together the most is our love for cooking, our passion for gardening and a certain zany insanity that may or may not be hereditary.

Remember that aggressive rooster George? He was abandoned by his mama when he was just barely hatched. Deliverance found him, nursed him back to health and carried him around in her shirt until he got big enough to fend for himself. Now he's turned into kind of a nuisance but we haven't decided to eat him. At least not yet . . . .