The Dewberries are Ripe!

I have been keeping an eye on the dewberries for a couple of months now. I have watched as they bloomed, leaving the fields covered with snow white blossoms, which fell away to reveal tiny little green clusters, which grew into larger white ones. They started reddening about a week ago, and are now finally turning a deep purplish-black. I have brought in a few to add to porridge and yogurt. Today I got the first good picking of them, resulting in about half a gallon. Not bad for the first batch!

I love living off of the land and it doesn't get much easier than foraging for nature's gifts. I spend all year cultivating the garden and taking care of the animals. Daily work to get things to grow. It is so nice to be able to harvest something with so little work! All I have to do is give the fields a final good mowing around October, and then leave them alone. The most difficult part is fighting with the briars to get to the berries. I admit, I look like I got in a fight with several angry cats! It keeps the chickens from stealing them all before I get to them, so I can't complain. My chickens are lazy and prefer easy meals. Any plants I put in pots are considered a delicacy, and their favorite treat is dog food, which they sneak through the back door to steal every chance they get. Briars are too much work for them. I wish they felt the same way about my strawberries... I wish I knew what they tasted like. I've never had one... The chickens get to them first every year. Another reason why I am so excited about the dewberries! I finally ended up going to the farmer's market and buying a flat of strawberries from a local farm. They were amazing!

Dewberries are basically blackberries. They grow along the ground rather than being bush-like. The berries are larger, but are usually not quite as sweet. After picking them, place them in a large bowl, fill it with cold water, and allow the berries to rest there for about 20 minutes. This brings the temperature of the berries down and cleans the dirt and any little bugs that were on them off. After that, pour them into a strainer and let them dry. Then they can then be eaten, used in a recipe, or frozen. To freeze, place in a single layer on a baking sheet and place sheet in the freezer. Once frozen, rake them into a freezer bag. That simple to have them to use year-round! They are wonderful in cobbler, porridge, yogurt, and over ice cream! I may end up making some wonderful jam and wine if I harvest enough this year. I am keeping a close eye on the bush blackberries too, which should be getting ripe in the next couple of weeks. The blueberries are getting close as well! It is the season for berries! MmMmM!!!!

Never Ending... I am Blessed

How is it that I can work so hard, for so long, and still keep falling behind?! So much to do, so much to do, and not enough time, or energy! My body is letting me know that it isn't as young as it once was... but when did I get old enough to have my joints and back hurt like this? How do I never get everything done and still keep having more things piled onto the "to-do" list? Do you know what the strangest part of it all is? I LOVE IT!

Five years ago I can remember grumbling about it being too darn ( I'm sure I used much more colorful words...) HOT to mow the yard. And it was such hard work! Why couldn't I just hire someone to mow?! Push mowing the whole yard was more than I could handle. Why did it have to be done so often? Did I mention that the yard was less than 1/4 an acre... including the driveway and where the actual house stood. Since then, I have moved to the deep south... now I know what hot REALLY is! Now one of my favorite jobs is push mowing about 2 acres of my yard. The rest is bush-hogged a few times a year.  It is killing me to have to wait to mow! The biggest part of my yard can't be bush-hogged until the dew-berries ripen. I will do that once they are picked. As for the rest of the yard, I am moving the baby chickens, who are about 10 weeks old now, around the yard in chicken tractors and I don't want to waste all the good grazing area. Moving the two chicken tractors is one of the first things I do in the morning, along with feeding and watering them. They are usually moved twice a day. I have ordered automatic waterers for both tractors. Now I need to remember to buy 5 gallon buckets with lids and fittings to connect them and build a spot on top of the tractor to hold the bucket. It will make the tractors heavier, but it will lesson the chance that they are ever out of water.

The raised bed garden is overgrown and hasn't been cleared yet, much less replanted. The tomatoes I and peppers I planted inside are getting HUGE and starting to fall over. They need replanting badly! I am, however, working on a much larger, new-and (hopefully) improved garden area! I am still going to use my 6x6 square above ground beds, but for things that spread (like pumpkins) and that I want a lot of (like tomatoes, corn, and bell peppers) those little beds just aren't working. I will write more in another post, but suffice it to say, I have spent hours and hours shoveling dirt, and pulling tree roots, and busting up dirt clods. Until my body hurts so badly I can hardly move and walk like something out of a zombie movie (slow zombies, not the ninja ones lol), and my hands are so stiff and in pain that I can hardly open and close them by the end of the day (this typing hurts!). I have been cutting down and moving brush and briars and have fire-ant bites and briar scratches up and down my arms and legs. But I keep waking up the next day, looking at how it is coming along, and am excited to start working on it again! Don't get me wrong... the pain isn't fun. I don't like feeling old... and don't feel like I am old enough to feel this old. But I love seeing all that I am accomplishing and I am so excited to be doing it!

 I love feeling physically tired at the end of the day. It feels like I have actually DONE something. I kept saying that I needed more exercise when I was sitting on my butt in an office. This is so much better than throwing away hours at a gym! I love looking around at all the things I have done and seeing how it has changed, and planning for what comes next. Nothing I do is perfect, but part of the fun is tweaking the design for the next one. I am on my 4th garden design and just finished my 6th chicken tractor. Each time, I think they get better but each time they are still lacking something. I could make a million of them and would never feel like it is perfect, but that just inspires me to make it even better next time!

I have heard the saying that 80% of running a farm is upkeep. Only 20% is progress. I wonder how they manage 20% progress! I feel, some days, like I spend all day running in place and still end up further behind than when I started that morning. Whoever called it the "simple life" is sadly mistaken! "Simple" it is not! It is hard work! It is backbreaking, heart breaking, and sweat breaking. Sometimes it is very frustrating. But most of the time I am enjoying everything I have too much to remember to be frustrated. I will never get caught up on all that there is to do around here. I will always be taking one step forward and two steps back. And you know what? I am blessed! I have learned that, by and large, some of the most "Zen" moments I have are when I am so exhausted that I have to sit down and take a break. I sit there, peacefully reflecting on what I have been doing and plan for what is to come after. It is a really beautiful feeling. I love taking moments to sit sit and watch the chickens clucking peacefully as they look for bugs, and the turkeys puffing up and strutting around to prove to me that each is the most handsome of all. I catch myself drifting off sometimes when I really need to be getting things done, but those moments are what I do it all for. I am sad to think of all the things that the me 5 years ago was missing out on. That me would never look at my life now and think that it was pleasant. I would have thought it miserable! Now, that's how I see my life back then. It amazes me how much I have changed. I wouldn't have it any other way. I love my life on Sunflower Hill!!!

1st Batch of Turkeys Hatched!

 The first batch of turkey eggs I had in the incubator hatched! I love sweet little baby turkey-heads! Out of 18 eggs, 4 of them weren't fertile (I'm thinking Tabby's first eggs. She has since started allowing the toms to do their thing), 1 quit around the time I added the 2nd batch (I'm thinking the temp flux was too much for it), and 1 quit a day or two ago (not sure what happened there). So 12 out of 18 isn't a great hatch rate but the 2nd batch appears to be turning out much better so far. Lets hope that this batch didn't shake them up too much! I knew that was going to be an issue when I started but I had a ton of turkey eggs and only 1 incubator!

Tallow's (Blue Slate hen) eggs had a perfect hatch rate and all of her eggs hatched first (a day early)! I believe that I ended up with 7 pure Bourbon Reds and 5 Bourbon/Slate mixes. Poor Yellow, my self blue tom, doesn't get mating privileges since he is toward the bottom of the pecking order so I didn't get any pure slates. I'm planning to work on a make shift breeding pen for them so I can get some slate babies this year. The coloring of the mixes surprised me! Two of them look like I would have expected. They look like slates with a little bit of a red tinge.
The other 3 are black tinged with red with a red belly and yellow around their eyes! I guess the slate (black) gene is stronger than I thought. They are so pretty and sweet!

 I have been planning to sell this batch since I set them but they make it so difficult! I get attached to them! The first batch of eggs that I sold hatched well! I heard from the new proud turkey-momma and she said that out of 12 eggs 9 pipped and 8 hatched. I'm not sure why the one pipped but didn't hatch but sometimes those things happen. That is a pretty darn good hatch rate for shipped eggs! She said she is already addicted to turkeys and was asking about buying more eggs already! I'm glad that she decided to wait for a little while and see how she does once they get bigger. She didn't get any black chicks. I need to look into the genetics. I'm really excited to see what these babies look like when they get bigger and feather out! I also sold 2 dozen more turkey eggs tonight so I hope that I can keep in touch with her and see how they turn out! I love keeping tabs on my grand-turkeys. I'm also a scientist at heart and like to know hatch rates and coloring. I will never make money raising and selling eggs, chicks, and poults, but it helps to pay for the feed and allows me to keep them and I REALLY enjoy it! I love sharing what I enjoy with other people! <3

Edited to add:
I had a second batch of turkey poults hatch out on 4-30-13 :)
14 total: 3 black, 3 blue, 7 bourbon reds.
All sold... I guess I need to start another batch in the incubator so I can have some! I really want some more blue slate hens! I need to start on a coop for Yellow and Tallow so I have a chance at getting some before the stop laying for the season.

The Turkey Tee-Pee is a Success!

I am very happy that the ladies seem to have taken to the turkey tee-pee almost immediately! The day after I installed it they scratched all of the leaves out of it, and in front of the pallet was an egg. Whether the egg was laid in the tee-pee and scratched out with the leaves, or was laid out in the open, I don't know. I replaced the leaves, but they were scratched back out again. I have not found another egg laid out in the open though! Every day I find two or three eggs laid directly on the feed bag lined pallet. I have added more leaves several times but they just don't seem to have gotten the idea that they belong in the tee-pee! Either way, it is a success! I even saw two of the ladies (Tawny and Tallow) in the tee-pee at the same time. Most of the toms don't seem to be interested in going into the nesting area at all and every egg has been in perfect shape. I have, however, caught one of the toms in the tee-pee sitting on an egg! I have read that sometimes toms will sit on eggs, but I never expected to see it! Something even more unexpected than that happened when I let the turkeys out to range today. Einstein, my Easter Egger rooster, ran into the turkey coop after the turkeys left. Tabby was still in the tee-pee tending to the egg she had just laid. To my surprise, Einy hopped on Tabby's back and tried to have his way with her! Tabby hopped up and ran out of the coop, with Einstein riding on her back the entire way! Quite the adventure! He was taking advantage of the tee-pee working as well! I love when my frugal ideas work out this well! Who says you can't get something for nothing?!

Cabbage, Potato, and Carrot Soup

I am always trying to find new ways to use veggies when they are in season. I had a beautiful head of cabbage around St. Patrick's Day and had exhausted my other recipes so I found a new way to put it to use. In soup! I love soup when it is cool out but most soups are heavy in cream and I feel guilty eating too much. Not this one! And it is still so creamy and delicious, all while being good for you! I tend to mix things as I go rather than measuring things out so it is all an estimate. The best thing about this soup is that you really can't mess it up!

Cabbage, Potato, and Carrot Soup

- 1/2 of a medium sized head of cabbage, chopped
- 4-6 medium potatoes, chopped into 1-2 inch cubes
- 3-4 large carrots, thinly sliced
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 4 cloves garlic (or to taste) diced
- 2 quarts chicken stock/broth

I raise and process my own chickens and turkeys so I make my own chicken/turkey stock. You needn't make it yourself, you can easily buy it. You can also make it yourself without having to process your own poultry using store bought chicken or turkey. When I process my chickens and turkeys I save the necks, and if I quarter them I save the backbone, stick them in the freezer, and when I need stock I just put them in a pot of water with some onions, garlic, and a little salt. Simmer for an hour or two, remove the solids, and voila! Homemade stock!

1. Saute the onions in a little bit of olive oil until translucent.

2. Add stock/broth and heat.

3. Add chopped veggies and garlic. They should be submerged in liquid. If they aren't simply add a bit more or add water.

4. Add salt and pepper to taste.

5. Simmer until the veggies are tender (about 30 minutes). The carrots will probably take the longest.

6. Eat like it is for a stew-like soup or puree with a immersion blender or in batches using a regular blender for a thicker soup. I prefer mine pureed. The trick to using a regular blender is to do it in small batches and ALWAYS pulse it a few times to avoid very hot liquid exploding out of the top.

7. Enjoy! I like to top it with a little cheddar cheese, but it isn't necessary. The best side I have found for this soup is a beautiful piece of Irish brown soda bread with a couple of pads of real cream butter on top. MmMmMm!

Irish Brown Soda Bread... the REAL deal!

Last year Brad and I traveled to Ireland for a couple weeks on a study abroad trip with school. It was an amazing experience! If there was one thing I could tell every freshman starting college it would be to take advantage of any study abroad trips available to them! I wish I would have known to do it sooner, rather than as a graduation gift to myself. I would have went on far more trips! I can't imagine a more beautiful and captivating place than Ireland, though. I dream of going back and will always have a special place in my heart for it. When we first arrived I noticed that they served these little loaves of dense brown bread where we stopped to eat in Dublin. I really didn't care for it. Well, as it turned out, they served that bread with every meal, in every town we went to. It grew on me and I went from disliking it, to craving it! I got the recipe from a friend of mine there and have been working on translating it (they weigh everything instead of measuring it) and making it taste the same with the mediocre ingredients we can get in the US. One of the truly amazing things about Ireland is that everything is made with REAL ingredients. Fresh ingredients. It isn't a big place so everything is within a couple hours drive. Artificial sweeteners and margarine are not found in ANYTHING! The food tastes different. It is so much better! We just can't get those quality ingredients here. Everything is made in the cheapest way possible.... yes I know. Stepping off of my soapbox now.

Anyway, this is as close as I have been able to imitate the recipe with what I have available. It is pretty darn close! This isn't the typical Irish Soda Bread, most Americans think of. This is the real deal. What they really serve in Ireland. You might just get addicted! I make a couple of loaves every week now. The best part! You mix it and throw it in the oven. No yeast, no waiting for it to rise, and VERY little kneading!

Brown Soda Bread

Unbaked Soda Bread

- 3 cups whole wheat flour
- 1 cup white all purpose flour
- 1/8 cup wheat germ (gives it more of the nutty flavor Irish whole wheat flour has)
- 1/8 cup old fashioned rolled oats
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3/4 - 1 pint buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F

2. Mix dry ingredients

3. Make a hole in the middle of the dry ingredients and start mixing in the buttermilk. It should be a dense dough and you may not need the whole cup. I usually use the whole cup, though. Not all of the dry ingredients will be incorporated. That is normal. Don't over mix! Just mix until it is a consistent ball of dough.it is normally slightly dry.

4. Dump dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead approximately 10 times.

5. Shape into loaf. Cut a deep cross into the top of the loaf. Bake immediately because the chemical reaction caused by the baking soda has already begun.

6. Bake for approximately 40 minutes. The loaf should sound hollow if you flip it over and knock on the bottom of it.

7. When you take it out of the oven, wrap it in a clean towel, flip it on its side and lean it up against something at an angle to allow it to fully cool.

8. Enjoy! Best served warm with a couple of pads of real cream butter! Amazing!

 I store mine (for as long as it takes to get eaten... usually not long) wrapped in that towel on the counter. Another amazing thing I learned in Ireland: Not everything has to be stored in a cold, sealed environment all of the time. In fact, some things don't store as well like that. In the markets (grocery stores) there, all of the bread was baked in loaves and placed in baskets. Open baskets, without any packaging. If they trust that at a store full of people, I think in my own personal kitchen filled only with my family, things will be fine. Do you know that they store all of their eggs on unrefrigerated shelves too?!Oh, and you have to pay for plastic grocery bags! 23 EURO each in Dublin! And, everything is recycled! It is difficult to find a trash can sometimes! Smart smart people! I will leave that for another soap box moment. :)

Busy, Busy Bee

I Love my Azaleas!

Things have been slowing down at the tax office that I work at, just in time to try to keep up with all of the things that are going on at the homestead. Notice, I said try. I am still falling behind! Coops need to be built, fences put up, and gardens tended to. None of the projects I needed to do over winter were accomplished. It seems that we either have the time or the money, but never both at once. Oh well. All in good time. I have still been busy!

The turkeys are doing great! Two of the Bourbon Red Toms are destined for the chopping block in a couple of days. There are just too many toms for my 3 poor hens, and they are fighting amongst themselves. Choosing which ones will go is difficult. Turkeys really are easy to get attached to, but this has been the plan for them since we got them as poults. I keep reminding myself that the life that they have had is turkey paradise and their death will be as painless and free of fear is death could possibly be. I refuse to give money to factories that raise birds any differently. I also don't want to put those unhealthy birds into my family's bodies.

The second generation of turkey-heads are in the incubator! I set 18 turkey eggs on the 22nd and their hatch date is April 19th! I have not separated the breeds yet so they are going to be a mix of Bourbon Reds, Bourbon/ Slate crosses, and there may be a blue slate or two in the mix. That is doubtful though because my Self Blue tom, Yellow, isn't the alpha tom and despite how hard he tries, he usually doesn't get mating privileges. One of my next projects is to build two small hoop coops. One of them may be used to give Yellow and Miss Tallow the privacy they deserve and, hopefully, give me the Blue Slate eggs I so desperately want! I may increase the gene pool by buying eggs from a friend of mine who also raises them. Hopefully, most of the poults hatched from this batch will be sold and the next batch will be used to increase my breeding stock.

Scissorus

One of the three chicks hatched in my emergency incubator, named Scissorus (Keegan said he was Roman), had scissor beak. I tried to feed him and give him water, but he wasn't doing well and his beak got worse every day. He didn't make it. The other two (both roosters, BO/BO and Einey EE/Ruthie NH?) are doing wonderfully, and we had a wonderful surprise last week when another egg from the emergency batch hatched! They have a cute fluffy little brother or sister (EE Greta mom- BO Jack dad). The rest of the eggs were duds, but I am overjoyed to have saved this many of them!

Keegan, INSIDE the chicken tractor playing with the babies.
Coincidentally, this was shortly after he he told me that he
doesn't actually like chickens (I asked him to feed them). <3

The "Outside Babies" are doing well and are getting HUGE! They will be too big for that chicken tractor soon. The other hoop coop I am going to be building will be for most of them. A few will be going into the project after that: boxes that fit directly in my raised garden beds so they can scratch around, till and fertilize the soil, and get rid of any bugs or weeds that are in there. My garden beds should be ready to go soon! This morning when I was feeding them before work I noticed a single bloody-ish looking stool in the coop. I have noticed the silly things hopping on top of their waterer, even after I raised it off of the ground to keep it clean, and are pooing in the water. I'm worried that one may have coccidiosis, which means they all likely do or will, so I treated the whole flock with Sulmet. I will treat them again when I get home. They are on medicated feed but when they are this young I don't like to take any chances. I don't give medication for the sake of giving medication. Not to myself, my family, or my animals. That is why we have the super-bugs that we do now-a-days. None of my adult birds are on medication, but babies are much more prone to getting sick, regardless of how well they are taken care of. They are all taken off of medicated feed when they are 8-10 weeks old and their immune system is stronger. I tried giving the babies unmedicated feed last year and nearly lost my whole batch to cocci. I am a fanatic about keeping coops clean, but apparently sometimes that doesn't completely eliminated the risk. As icky as many people think it sounds, it is VERY important to keep an eye on your poultry poo! Sometimes that is the first, or only, sign that something is wrong. It also helps to catch things early enough to do something about it!

No matter how many egg baskets I get, this is how my eggs
usually get carried to the house. :)

The adult chickens are producing lots of eggs and they are selling really well! I have to make sure to keep some back for us! Our foster puppy, Chicago, has been fighting Pneumonia since we brought her home. We have had her for nearly two months and her improvement is amazing! She couldn't breath through her nose at all when we first got her, and would not eat. She was losing weight rather than gaining it like a puppy should. After changing her antibiotics, she showed a little improvement with her breathing, but not much with her eating and weight gain. I gave her wet food, dry food, NutriCal nutrient supplement gel... nothing seemed to work. I was really getting worried that she wouldn't make it, simply because she wouldn't eat! Finally, not knowing what else to do, I started giving her boiled eggs. Farm fresh pastured eggs are packed full of nutrients and protein. She ate them! She started gaining weight and getting her energy back immediately! She also got her appetite back and began eating like a horse! She goes through more dog food than I think she has room to put it in her bony little body, but she is increasing the space every day! She is on another round of antibiotics to try to get rid of that last pocket of fluid in her lungs, and her medicine is delivered twice a day, you guessed it, hidden in the middle of a boiled egg! All the antibiotics in the world wouldn't have helped her without her getting the nutrients that her body needed to give her strength to fight the infection. Ah, the power of eggs! She is going to be healthy enough to be spayed soon and then will be on her way to Maine to find her new forever family! I love happy endings!

From bottom to top: Elliot, Chicago, and Ari is hiding way in the back. 

All of Sunflower Hill is covered in snow white dew berry
blooms! What could be better? The whole place
being covered in dew berries soon! 

Speaking of happy things, the seedlings I planted are still alive! Yes, I am thrilled about this! I love growing things, but starting seedlings inside has always been my downfall. They always start out strong and then wilt and die. The tomatoes are getting really big and the peppers are looking dark green and strong. All except for the jalapeno peppers, none of which came up at all! I'm probably going to have to replant those. Some of the eggplants failed to come up, as well. I am loving my new seedling shelf in the kitchen! I think that the space put aside just for them in a draft and bump free area, and the shop lamp hung over the trays, might just keep my seedlings from dying before they get planted! The strawberry plants have tiny green strawberries and flowers on them. Now I need to fence the strawberry patch off so the chickens don't get them all before I get any this year! The peas have sprouted, the brussel sprouts budding, and I got my first little bunch of broccoli the other day! I am counting down the days until I get some fresh dewberries!

All in all, everything here on the homestead is bustling and growing! That is what spring is all about! I am loving life, busy busy busy as it may be, up on Sunflower Hill!