Name That Chicken Contest Winner!

Congratulations to Alyssa Oleary, from Arizona with her correct answer of Crevecoeur chicken. Alyssa is the April, Name That Chicken Contest winner! This must have been a tough photo because I only got two correct answers, there were plenty of Black Polish guesses.

The Crevecoeur is France's oldest known breed of chicken. It is a dual purpose bird that lays white eggs. The Crevecoeur is on the "critical" list of the American Livestock Breed Conservancy. Meaning that these chickens are very rare. Click on the link above to learn more about this breed.

Name That Chicken Contest!

The April, Name That Chicken Contest deadline is approaching soon. ~This Saturday, 4-30-11~ Be sure to enter for your chance to win one of Zach's hand forged bottle openers.

Simple Gifts

One of the best things in life is receiving a hand made gift. My friend Stacey makes beautiful hand made soap, infused with bits of fruits and herbs, essential oils, goats milk and all sorts of other yummy goodies for your skin. She uses nature inspired molds to make things pretty and earthy. Her soap has cured my cracking knuckles, and feels wonderful as a face soap. I was lucky enough to receive these beauties. They're almost too pretty to use, but I love them so I gotta! 

Spring in the Garden

We were blessed with some nice warm and sunny weather finally, so I took advantage of Mother Nature's gift and planted some early spring vegetables.

The tender asparagus shoots are emerging. They are telling me they want to be bathed in hollandaise!

Lettuce is so beautiful. It's like a rose, but somehow less showy, more plain and delicate which appeals to me even more.

Carrots that survived the winter.

Parsley from last year too.

Ceddie was a great help. I have to say, he is so cute, he is very careful when walking in the garden to stay in the paths. I can leave him be without worrying about him trampling anything.

I planted broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts (don't judge, they're delicious roasted) leaf lettuce, romaine and a spring assortment, and peas. Some spring garlic doing well after winter.

Oregano, sprinkling tiny green leaves across the ground.

CC Post: Crispy Fried Chicken Livers with Carmalized Onions

One more post today on Community Chickens. Check out my Fried Chicken Liver Recipe.

Community Chicken's Post, Ukrainian Eggs

Check out my April, Community Chicken's post Ukrainian Eggs

Spring in Full Force

Before...

My oh my, have I been busy this week. Because spring has been so late, now that the weather has broke I've been going non-stop! The goats are sheared, and one rabbit down. Tomorrow, hopefully I can get Grommit sheared and then start cleaning the barn of the winter pile up. Yay?

After!

I'm so proud! I sheared the goats almost all by myself, and got through the shearing nick free!!! No triple anti-biotic for anyone!! Usually someone gets it, including me. I don't know if I'm getting more comfortable, or if the girls are getting used to being sheared, I think the biggest factor is that they're growing into all that wrinkled skin. Angora goats have loose wrinkled skin and it just loves to wedge itself between the shearing blades. When you shear, you can't pull the shorn wool back or you'll stretch the skin up and go into their flesh. Instead you have to pull the skin taught and run the clippers flat. The hard part is that the wool wants to come off all in one piece, like a pelt, so you need one hand to shear, one hand to smooth the skin, and another hand to move the mohair out of the way. Maybe the reason shearing was so easy was because I grew that third hand this year. No wait, that's not it.    

The Herb-ies Win!

According to the weekly poll which asked, "What will you plant this spring?" many of you appear to be herb enthusiasts, with vegetables coming in at a close second. I'm sure you've all heard me mention my dear friend Camille's wonderful site Skin Care For Your Soul where she creates and shares all sorts of yummy natural skin care products. But to those of you who are also interested in the use of herbs, she has tons of useful information on her own site, and on The Herb Companion an online magazine that she writes for. Check them all out! 

What's Bread Without a Little Butter?

Nothing beats homemade bread, well, maybe homemade bread with homemade butter. I love the creaminess of the butter when it's freshly made, and I have to admit that I over salt it a bit to tang it up a bit.

We start with heavy whipping cream. I leave it out on the counter to come to room temperature. You can leave it out a little longer than that even, around 8 hours. I feel like it gives the butter a little something extra, warms the flavor a bit. The room temperature cream helps the butter glob-duals form faster.

Then I put it in a mason jar. (Side note, I'm in love with mason jars. Someday I will write a post about my love affair with mason jars.) And shake, and shake, and shake, and then find some other sorry sap that you can talk into shaking, tell them that butter is lots of fun to make and all that jazz. And then after they shake for a while they'll probably get bored and give you the jar back. And you'll continue to shake. All of a sudden the butter will go from a jushing sound to a plopping sound. (I promise it will happen...keep shaking) Oh, you can also take some of the cream out of the jar to allow for more movement back and forth.

Once you get to the plopping stage, (technical terms here) unscrew the lid and pour the contents out into a bowl. You will now have butter and butter milk. Keep the butter milk and make it into biscuits, ranch dressing, what ever your heart's desire.

I now rinse the butter several time by adding cold water, smushing it down with a spoon a few times, and pouring it out. Do this until the water runs fairly clear.

Then add salt if you desire to taste. I do desire, and I usually add more than the store bought. Cold butter will taste saltier than room temp, so keep that in mind. Lather lots on homemade bread. Store in refrigerator.

Check out these beautiful butter molds from Lehmanns to make your homemade butter even prettier. Lehmanns is a great homesteading supply website. 

Sauder Village Quilt Show

Thanks to farm girl Cheryl for the heads up on the Sauder Village Quilt Show in Archbold, Ohio starting Tuesday, April 26th - Sunday, May 1st, 2011. Sauder Village looks amazing! I've never been there, but Cheryl assures that it's a great place to visit and has been there with family several times. It's a historic village that gives demonstrations on all sorts of old world skills including blacksmithing, glass blowing, coopering, rug hooking and much more! Click the Sauder Village home page to view their events calendar.

April Name That Chicken Contest!

The April contest is up! This time no hints. You have to name the breed of chicken shown in the photo. Subscribe, and fill out the form to the right for a chance to win one of Zach's hand forged bottle openers. Contest ends April 30th, 2011.

Congratulations to our March winner, Anne Snudden from Michigan!

The Spoils of Homemade Bread

It is so easy to simply grab a loaf of bread and toss it into the cart at the grocery store. Done! And while our grocery store does offer some nice artisinal bread choices, it never compares to the warmth, the smells and of course the taste of homemade bread!

With Spring taking its grand old time getting here, I feel myself slipping back into winter's hibernating dreariness. Instead of craving fresh salads with lite vinegarettes, or delicate asparagus spears with hollandaise like I usually do come April, I could go for a warm pot of stew or a nice hearty soup. One look outside on a day like today where the weather can't make up its mind whether it wants to snow or rain, so it does both and it all comes down with a fierce wind helping it along, blowing vertically across the yard...time to make bread.

There's nothing more pleasant than working in the kitchen, on a Sunday afternoon, with the warm oven heating the room, the rising dough and the inner depths of my soul. My grandmother's bowls scattered around the counter tops, with flour sack towels lying over puffs of soft dough at different levels of rise.

My favorite part of making bread is the kneading. There is something inherently human about handling bread dough. It's just right somehow. Bread dough is very skin like, very organic and soothing. Flashes of my grandmother's hands with delicate blue veins, swollen knuckles and autumn leaf skin, dry and old but full of a summer's worth of character, come flooding back to me as real as if it were yesterday. Her hands, though aged, could wield a round of bread dough without thought or concentration. It was second nature, something she had done a thousand times. It was not nostalgic, or old fashioned. It was action without label, or maybe yet, it was in fact for her, life.

Ahhhh! Rabies!!!

Not really, but I did scream.

Feed us, feed us!

Saturday night we got home from running errands a bit late, and the sun was already down. We had an early appointment that morning and I was rushing to get the morning chores done. I tossed the grain ration in the girls feed buckets, they were probably happy that I was being speedy because, as they are goats, and goats being what goats are, they are eternally wanting grain. Anyway... apparently I forgot to close the lid on the stainless steel can that holds their food and their small bag of vitamins.

That evening, after we got home we went to settle everyone down for the night. I scooped out the goats evening ration of grain once again, they were apparently starving, withering away really. (Yeah right, that's why we have to buy them bigger coats every spring~ little fatties!) So, I reach my hand in the small bag of vitamin grain that we add to the food once a day and what is this fuzzy thing? Ahhh the fuzzy thing is moving, and wiggling and scratching my hand. I screamed and chucked the bag across the barn floor. Zach, my hero, who was in the chicken coupe next door, came rushing in and picked up the bag. We looked inside and saw two trembling glossy eyes staring up at us, like "what the heck lady?" A little brown field mouse had climbed inside and probably ate until his heart was content. He will be aptly named, among his fellow mice, as Super Mouse as he O.D.ed on goat vitamins. He will be lacking nothing as far as nutrients are concerned for the rest of his life. We let him go in the woods, I'm sure he will find his way back tomorrow and father hundreds of Super Mice descendants. I don't really care about mice in the barn, so long as I'm not squeezing them with my bare hands. I told Zach that I now have Rabies and he rolled his eyes. He won't think it's so funny when I start foaming from the mouth. ~Ha!