Gumbo!

One of the additional benefits of the cooler weather that Fall and Winter brings to South Louisiana is that it is "GUMBO WEATHER," although I have to admit, we eat it all year long.  Gumbo is a hearty meal that is flavorful, nourishing and is a true comfort food.  Who can't be comfortable eating a big bowl of delicious gumbo?

Gumbo is a dish that originated in Louisiana in the 18th century and it is thought that the word gumbo comes from from the African name for okra, which is used as a thickener for the dish.  Gumbo is so versatile.  We primarily eat chicken and sausage gumbo, but there is seafood gumbo, duck gumbo, dove gumbo, and shrimp and okra gumbo, among any other combination you can imagine.  It merges cooking styles from the African, French, Spanish, and Indians into one unique bowl of deliciousness.

We raise and butcher our own meat chickens.  We'll normally butcher 50 to 100 birds in a day and we process them here at home into an 8 piece cut-up and freeze them individually in gallon Ziploc bags.  When we're ready for a meal, we simply pull one out of the freezer and thaw.  That's what we'll do today to get things hopping for our chicken and sausage gumbo.


Frozen fryer cut up in 8 pieces

In the morning, Tricia will put the chicken in a large stockpot with some water and bring to a boil, she'll cover and turn the heat down and let it cook for 2 - 3 hours.  Then she turns the heat off and lets the bird sit it the warm water for the rest of the afternoon.  This makes the flavor great not to mention the fact that a good bone broth is sooooo healthy and good for you.

Cut up chicken in the pot

Next, it is time to make the roux.  In a lot of Cajun cuisine, the recipe starts with: "First, you make a roux..."  A roux is simply flour and oil that is browned.  We try to make ours as healthy as possible.  Tricia uses coconut oil because coconut oil is good for heating at high temperatures.  In the photo below, you can see she's added 1/4 cup of oil to a heated cast iron dutch oven.  Coconut oil will solidify in cooler temperatures - that's why you see the white lumps melting in the pot.


Heating the oil to make the roux

Once the oil is heated, add 1 cup of flour and stir up the mixture with a wooden spoon.


Adding the flour to the heated dutch oven

Now would be a good opportunity to turn your vent hood on as this process generates a little smoke sometimes.

You'll want to be real attentive making roux.  There is a real fine line between a perfect roux and a burned one.  The secret is to stand by the pot and keep stirring.



The roux is getting close

The roux is closer.  See the smoke?

Now the roux is done.  I like the roux to be a very dark brown.  To me it adds to the color and rich flavor of the dish. 


I like it with almost a dark chocolate color

Now we cut up some vegetables in the gumbo.  Here we will cut up some homegrown peppers from the garden, some onion, and garlic.  The holy trinity of vegetables used in gumbo is celery, bell pepper, and onion.  We've also added garlic today.


Chop these up

Add the chopped vegetables to your roux and stir until the vegetables have cooked down.  This will start smelling real good and will entice everyone in the house and the yard to ask you when supper will be ready.  Remind them that "Patience is a virtue" or "Good things come to those who wait."


Stir in the vegetables and cook

Meanwhile, take your cooked chicken out of the stockpot.  Leave your broth right where it is.


Removing the cooked chicken from the simmering broth

Now we'll add a quart of okra.  In the summer when the okra is producing copious quantities, we blanch, cut up, and freeze okra specifically for winter gumbos.  (It's good to plan ahead!)  Here Tricia has removed a quart from the freezer and is preparing it for adding to the stock.  Okay, add it to the stockpot.


Fresh frozen cut up okra

We try to purchase locally as much as we can for the items that we don't grow ourselves.  Here Tricia is adding about a pound of smoked sausage.  There is a family owned specialty meat market in Jennings that we patronize.  They make sausage to our specifications, with no artificial preservatives.  We see that as serving at least two benefits: we support a local family operated business and consume a healthier product.  Add the cut up smoked sausage to the simmering broth and okra mix.


Adding cut up sausage to the pot

Go ahead and add your roux to the stockpot now.


Adding the roux to the pot

Now Tricia will de-bone the chicken and add to the simmering pot.  Lots of people leave the bones in for flavor.  We've already simmered the chicken for most of the day, so the flavor is already in the broth.  De-boning it just means we can wolf it down quicker.  Yum!  We save the neck and backbone and skin for Promise, the dog, and incorporate the rest of the bones in with the compost.


De-boning the Bird

Finally, at long last, it is time to eat.  Many people put a spoon of potato salad in their gumbo.  We've recently started doing something that I hear people in North Louisiana do - putting sweet potatoes in gumbo.  We like it.  Of course start off your bowl with plenty of rice.  Gotta have rice.  Then ladle the hot gumbo on top of the rice.  I might add a word of caution here.  Watch out for the person with the heavy hand.  You know, the one who dips his or her ladle down to the bottom of the pot and tries to pick out all of the good stuff, the sausage or chicken or shrimp, etc.  Don't be shy in scolding them for this behavior, but I digress.  Then, add a dollop of potato salad or sweet potatoes.  Top with some green onions or fresh parsley.  Some people eat gumbo along with saltine crackers or some good French bread.  Add some gumbo file to it as well.  Gumbo file is made from the ground up leaves of the sassafras tree and adds thickness and a good earthy flavor to a dish already bursting with flavor. 



Dinner is served!

Say Grace as you'll want to thank the Almighty for this meal and sit down and enjoy your gumbo.  The best part is leftovers.  Tomorrow, the gumbo will taste even better - if that is possible.

We're feeding the cats too much

Here's a sure fire way to find out if you are feeding the cats too much Cat Chow.  If you set a trap in the feed room in the barn and catch one almost immediately followed by another... and another... and another and so on and so forth, you're feeding them too much.  The body count is at 9 now since Thanksgiving and counting, and I continue to bait the traps and catch one more each day.  This is not a catch and release program.  Those boogers love pecans - that's what I bait the traps with.  The rat death toll rises in inverse proportion to my satisfaction level with our farm cats.  Doggonit.  This is their job.  They've become fat, lazy, and dependent and have allowed the rat population in the barn to grow while they slept on the job.  That ends today.  I've scheduled a performance appraisal with both of the cats.  They are going to have to step it up!


"You disgust me."  " Prove it!"  Okay!  (You've seen that commercial, right?)

This morning we were awakened by Magnolia mooing loudly - intermittently but frequently.  Tricia checked the calendar and sure enough, she's in heat, proving that the broken fence 21 days ago during her last cycle did not result in Maggie's pregnancy by Stryker, the Jersey bull.  This is a good thing.  We want to space out our milk cows' calf deliveries so as not to have 3 cows in milk at the same time.  We don't have enough farm hands around our house for that much activity!


Stryker, the amorous Jersey Bull

 Over the Thanksgiving Holidays, Tricia's mom came in from South Texas for a visit along with one of her brothers from Houston.  We had a nice time visiting, eating, relaxing, etc.  My parents gave me a fire pit for my birthday and I took it out of the box for its inaugural burning.  It was really relaxing to start a nice fire going.  We arranged the patio chairs around it.  Russ pulled out his guitar and strummed a few chords and Tricia's brother, David, played some tunes for us.  Of course we roasted marshmallows and sang and talked until the fire burned out.  I like the new fire pit!



Anyone know any campfire songs?

The weather was just perfect for sitting out by a fire - not too hot, but not too cold.  We burned a lot of the pecan branches from the yard.  A good time was had by all.

I have to show you the camellias.  They are in full bloom right now with a gazillion more buds about to open as you can see in the photo below.


Camellia Sasanqua

I primarily like to grow things that you can eat, but these plants are stunning in their color and beauty that a picture just can't do justice to.  To me, camellias remind me of the South, even though they originated in the Far East.  Their blooms stand out as lots of times, they are the only colorful thing blooming in the Fall.

I'll leave you with a smile, literally.  A breakfast consisting of fresh raw milk, fresh scrambled eggs from the hens topped off with Tabasco sauce, homemade blueberry biscuits topped with homemade seedless blackberry jelly and a slice of bacon (store bought) brings a smile to my face - and my plate smiled back at me!


A happy plate



Making Quiche

Back in the 80's there was a popular book called, "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" that made fun of male stereotypes.  I have to come clean with you.  I'm a man.  I'm real.  I eat quiche.  There, I got that out of the way.

After Thanksgiving, who isn't looking for new and exciting ways to get rid of the leftover turkey?  Turkey sandwich?  Yawn.  We thought we'd make the bird disappear by incorporating it into one of the more popular dishes in our home - the quiche, a french dish that is an open faced pastry or pie filled with cheese, meat, eggs, and vegetables.  We normally make a broccoli and chicken quiche, but this time, we thought we'd deviate and use chopped up turkey coupled with fresh mustard greens from the garden.  That's the neat thing about this dish - it is versatile, you can throw anything you'd like in it - bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, just try whatever is fresh in your garden at the moment.

So first I went out to the garden and selected a nice handful of mustard greens, brought them inside and washed them up real good and chopped them.


Fresh mustard greens

For this recipe, Tricia uses a cookbook by Jude Theriot called La Cuisine Cajun as a starting point, but I think she alters a few ingredients:

We heated up a cast iron dutch oven with some butter and chopped onions in the bottom and then added the mustard greens.  I'll admit, I sampled some straight from the pot.  Good stuff!  When I was younger, I didn't like greens.  Now, wow, I didn't know what I was missing.  I could serve this up on some cornbread right now and be happy, but these mustard greens have a "higher calling."



Pot of sauteed mustard greens

So then Tricia made up a homemade pie crust and added the chopped up remains of the Thanksgiving turkey, a cup of the sauteed mustard greens, 2 tablespoons of slivered almonds, 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese, 1/2 cup of Mozzarella cheese and 1 cup of grated Swiss cheese.



A good meal starting to come together

We then take some eggs from our hens that Russ just gathered from their nests and Tricia broke up 5 of them into a Pyrex measuring cup.

If you're gonna make quiche, you gotta break a few eggs

Then we add a cup of Daisy's fresh raw milk to the eggs and scramble it all up real good.


 A heaping cup full of Daisy

To this developing concoction of culinary goodness, we add the spices: Tabasco sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, curry powder, nutmeg.  Be creative.  Your taste buds will thank you for it.

Adding the spices

Then pour into your pie shell.  Preheat your oven to 375 and cook for 30 minutes or until you can slide a butter knife in and it comes out dry.  In the picture below, I'm peeking in the oven, anticipating the first slice.


Almost done

And here is the finished product, ready for consumption.  We accomplished our goal:  The Thanksgiving turkey is gone and in a few short minutes, so will this quiche.  The cookbook says it feeds 6, but who are we kidding?  I'm going to go ahead and loosen my belt up a notch and eat about a third of it all by myself!


"Honey, can you bring me the pie serving thingy and a fork?"

 Gotta run.  Bon Apetit!

Trellising Sugar Snap Peas

I am convinced that sugar snap peas are the closest thing to candy that a green vegetable can get.  Benjamin is pretty particular about 'green' things that he eats and he eats sugar snap peas like Skittles.  They can be eaten raw right from the garden or stir fried or steamed with butter.  We harvest them, blanch them and freeze them and enjoy them all year long.  This year I doubled up and planted two 24 foot rows since we ran out of them prematurely this fall. 

I staggered the two plantings by a couple of weeks to extend the harvest.  The photo below shows the latest ones I planted.  If you'd stretch them out, they're about 8 inches tall now.  But they are falling all over the place.  They need a trellis to grow on as they are extending tendrils and want to climb.


Young Sugar Snap Peas eager to climb

The photo below shows the earliest ones I planted.  You can see that they are healthy, some of them are starting to bloom and some of them have climbed almost to the top of the 4 foot tall cattle panel I'm using for a trellis.  Once they reach the top, they'll keep growing and fall over making the harvesting process hard.  Last year I extended the trellis an additional 4 feet taller by wiring some additional rods to the T-posts and then ran baling twine from end to end for the peas to continue growing on.  It worked okay, but I learned that I really needed something stronger than string for them to grow on.  

Peas shooting on up the trellis

For my second row of sugar snap peas, I wanted to experiment.  I looked into just buying another couple of cattle panels and stacking them one on top of the other to make an 8 foot trellis.  This was a little pricey for my budget so I explored other options at the local hardware store and came up with this alternative to try.  I purchased a mat of reinforcement wire mesh that is 20 feet long and 8 feet tall.  It was more affordable and almost the dimensions I needed it to be.  My rows are 24 feet long.  I built a 4 foot extension on the end with sticks lashed together for the 4 foot shortfall.  The only thing I'll have to work on is securing the top 4 feet.  As you can see below, it is kind of wobbly.  I'll probably wire another T-post directly above the existing one to provide support.  Once the peas have trellised upward, if I don't have a stable trellis, the wind will likely blow it over. 

I think this will work better.  It is lighter than the cattle panel, but it doesn't need to be a heavy gauge wire to do what I need it to do.  Additionally, I'm going to experiment using this set-up to trellis my heirloom indeterminate tomatoes on in the Spring.  Those tomatoes vine and vine and I always have trouble with them falling over.  I'm hoping that I'll be able to secure them to the wire mesh just like the sugar snap peas.  We'll see how that works out in the Spring...

Enhancing the Chicken Tractor

Sometimes I just don't think things all the way through.  I'm not a carpenter and the plans I go by only exist in my head.  I like to research on the Internet and pull together the best designs of a lot of people so as not to reinvent the wheel and then I try to build what would work best with our needs and then merge the best ideas all together into one plan.  Designs I use are seldom replicated.  I have 3 chicken tractors and none of them are alike.  I try to improve the design and I'm not afraid of trying something and admitting that it doesn't work and then trying something new.  Things I build for use on our farm are all homemade, usually out of recycled or scrap materials.  Animals don't care if your cuts are square or if the building materials are new! 

So this weekend I had a simple discovery and design alteration that I should have thought of years ago.  Sometimes I just don't use my noggin.  When I moved the pullets the other day, I moved the bell waterer from one tractor to the other.  This bell waterer has been a lifesaver for me.  It hangs suspended from the roof of the chicken tractor instead of sitting on the ground.  In the past, I always had a regular 1 gallon water container just like the one shown below.  I had to pick it up each day before I pushed the chicken tractor to a new location, turn it over, unscrew the lid, fill it with water (one gallon at a time) and then lean over and place it back on the ground in the tractor.

The bell waterer is suspended so I never have to move it.  It moves with the tractor.  It is connected by hose to a 5 gallon bucket that sits on top of the roof of the tractor and gravity feeds the water to the bell waterer.  I fill the 5 gallon bucket with water maybe twice a week.  This saves work and time -  you can imagine the benefits.  So while moving the bell waterer, I suddenly became aware that I should do the same thing with the feed troughs! 

I currently have to lean over in the tractor, pick up the feed trough, push the chicken tractor to fresh grass, refill the trough with feed, and then set the trough back down in the tractor.  The gluttonous cows have learned that they can walk up to the tractor and get their heads in the chicken feed bucket while I'm leaning over in the tractor to pick up the feed trough.  So why not make it easier on myself and suspend the feed trough as well?  All I did was drill four holes on all four sides of the existing feed trough, cut four pieces of baling twine, and then hang the feed from the roof of the tractor by the twine.  You can see the suspended bell waterer in the picture as well.  Now I don't need to move anything.  All I do is get behind the tractor, push it forward one length until the pullets are in fresh grass, open the trap door on top and pour a scoop or two of chick grower/rice/oyster shell mix in the trough.  Much easier - much faster - much better!  (Why didn't I think of this sooner?  What else am I missing?)



Hanging the feed trough

One thing about chickens, as the photo above illustrates, is that they don't have good table manners.  As a kid you probably had your momma tell you not to play with your food.  I bet you never had her tell you to stop standing in your plate, right?  Chickens just don't know any better.  A quick search on the Internet confirmed my suspicions - a chicken's brain is the size of a pea (those pea brains!).  While not very smart critters, they sure are fun to watch and we enjoy keeping them.  Here is another shot looking down from the trap door from where I pour the feed.


Hungry birds

She doesn't seem the least bit ashamed by her atrocious table manners. 


All 31 of these pullets should begin laying eggs within the next few weeks.  It is really bizarre how it happens.  One chicken will lay an egg one day and it's like they all start laying at once over the next few days.  We're waiting for that to happen.  Our egg production which was averaging around 36 eggs per day, is down to about 6 eggs a day.  In fact, we've stopped selling them so we have enough to eat ourselves.  I wanted to show you a picture of what their first eggs look like.  From our experience, the first eggs from our pullets are very small.  I put a medium egg beside it for perspective.  It is only about an inch and a quarter long, but other than that, a perfect little egg.  I hope we'll start seeing some of these soon.

Eggcited for the pullets to start laying

Healthcare for Rosie

We've been watching Rosie pretty closely.  She gave birth to a calf prematurely last Saturday morning.  The calf was dead, unfortunately.  Rosie did not progress in her delivery and the placenta did not break off.  After a few days, we called our veterinarian and he made a farm call.  He told us to give Rosie six days and then call him back if it hadn't released.  At that time he would consider giving her a hormone injection to put her back into labor to continue delivering the placenta and then follow that up with a regimen of antibiotic injections to ward off infection.  He asked us if we were milking her and we said yes.  He told us that that was a good thing since the milking would simulate a calf nursing and stimulate things to move along as far as the placenta was concerned.

Well, 6 days came and went.  When we called the vet back, he was out of town.  The mess hanging from her backside was beginning to smell and I was very concerned about infection as she was discharging.  Tricia left a message with his answering service.  On the positive side, she was really starting to pick up, acting more alert and eating more.   She was really pretty much back to normal, whereas, on Saturday, she had us pretty concerned.  But now, her milk production that was originally lackluster has been gaining in volume with each passing day.



An unsightly mess...


The veterinarian called us back and we updated him on the situation.  He has cows and said this happens from time to time.  He told us that for his cows, he watches them closely and only gives them antibiotics if they need it, but he had to advise us to go ahead and start her on a subcutaneous injection of 8 cc's per day of penicillin.  He said that if you aren't careful, they can get a systemic infection and can go down quickly.  He was at his office a mile down the road and had mixed up the syringes for me, so I ran down to his office and picked them up.  I talked to him for a bit.  He told me that the old-timers say that you need to go in there and remove the placenta.  The danger with doing that, he said, is that the placenta is connected to the uterus with little "buttons" and if you forcibly remove it, you can scar the uterus.  He said if all possible just to let nature take it's course.  I like that non-invasive approach.

The boys and I had just watched an old Clint Eastwood western, Fist full of Dollars.  I didn't have a fist full of dollars, but I came home with a fist full of syringes.


Fist full of ... syringes.

I don't enjoy giving or getting injections.  I wanted to ensure that I was putting them in the right place.  YouTube is a great place to learn how to do most anything.  I searched, "How to give a subcutaneous injection on cattle" and several videos popped up that show you exactly how you do it.  YouTube is an incredible thing!  There is no end to what you can learn how to do on that website.

The more we started thinking about it, though, we didn't want to load Rosie up with antibiotics if we didn't need to.  One of the reasons we have milk cows is for the health reasons of drinking raw milk.  Antibiotics would kill the good bacteria as well as the bad and we'd have to give her pro-biotics to build back up the good bacteria in her.  So we decided just to watch her really closely and give the injections only if we absolutely needed to.

Well great news today.  This morning we went out to milk and Rosie had gotten rid of the rest of the placenta - at last.  I found it by the water trough.  Not pretty to look at.  We decided that the first order of business after church was to give Rosie a bath.  She really stunk as you might imagine.  So I stretched out the hose by the barn, got some soap and a stiff brush and gave her a good scrubbing.  She's still wet in the picture below and not very happy with me, but she's clean and smelling a whole lot better.

That's a neat trick putting your tongue in your nose, Rosie.  Very lady-like


This photo shows how her bag is in "full bloom" (full of milk).  If we can keep her healthy, she ought to be in good form for the livestock shows in January.  These are Russ' last shows, so we want him to have the best possible chance to succeed.  Poor Rosie lost her calf, but as it looks now, she's going to be healthy and in milk - thank the Good Lord!


Would someone please milk me?



The pullets get a new home

A pullet is a young hen that is usually less than a year old.  Our Barred Rock pullets should begin laying eggs any day now.  When they lay their first egg, we normally set them free from the chicken tractor that they've been living in and allow them to "free-range" on the pasture.  The chicken tractor allows us to move them to fresh grass daily while distributing their poop evenly on the pasture.  It also allows them to grow up safely away from predators like hawks and owls.  Once they are bigger and are street smart, they are able to protect themselves better, so we open the door to the tractor and let them roam free during the day.  At night they return to roost inside the tractor.  This keeps them safe from the nocturnal predators.

The current chicken tractor that they are in measures 12 feet by 6 feet and there are currently 31 pullets in it.  We'll be moving them into a little larger chicken tractor that measures 12 feet by 8 feet.  In the photo below I've rolled the current tractor right next to the new one to make the move easier.


Moving from one tractor to another

Here is the new tractor that I'll be moving them into.  You can see the door in the front that I open during the day so they can roam free.  You can also see the roosting bars built on the back half of the tractor.  The back half has a roof over it to protect the pullets somewhat from the elements.  The first thing I need to do is to move the bell waterer from the old tractor and install it in this one.

The pullets' new larger home

The pullets have grown a lot since the last time you've seen them.  They'll like their new home as it is roomier and will allow them to "stretch out their wings."


Cramped Quarters

I've moved the bell waterer and installed it in the larger tractor.  They are ready to move in, but with  a couple of small orders of business to take care of first.

We will remove the pullets, counting them to ensure we still have 31 birds, and then place them in their new tractor.  First, we will clip one of their wings.  Our perimeter fence is only 4 feet tall.  Chickens can't fly very high.  To be safe, though, I want to clip one of their wings to keep them off balance and unable to fly over the fence as there are dogs and other predators outside the safety of the pasture.  Clipping their wings doesn't hurt them.


Getting their wing clipped

You can see the difference in the wings below.  The left wing is clipped.  The right one, we won't clip at all.

Comparative view

We also put a color coded cable tie on one of their legs, leaving plenty of room for them to grow.  Since we'll have 100 birds on the pasture, we want to be sure we can tell the ages of the different birds.  Our older birds have orange cable ties on their legs.


Tagging a pullet's leg for identification

Now we counted them, confirmed that we have 31 birds, and have moved them.  For the first time in several months the old chicken tractor is empty.  We will use this tractor to house the meat chickens after we move them out of the brooder.  They'll arrive in a couple weeks, so I have plenty of time to push this tractor closer to the house.


An empty house

Here they are in their new home.

Scoping out the place.  The plan is to leave them in this tractor for several weeks to get them familiar with roosting in it.  Then, after a few weeks, we'll open the door and they can come and go as they please.  As creatures of habit, they'll return here to roost nightly, safely out of the way of predators.

One more bit of housecleaning - we gathered up all the feathers from when we clipped their wings.  There's no waste around here:  We will compost the feathers in the garden.

It's good to get that crossed off the list.