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.