A "Soup-er" Day

It was very hot and humid this past week.  I am hot natured and sweat buckets-ful around this time of year.  I really don't enjoy soup in hot weather as I'm looking for something to cool me off after being outdoors.  However, it was raining, and my wife said, "It looks like soup weather."  I guess you could look outside and trick yourself into believing that it was a cold, rainy day, if you had an active imagination.

Tricia had already pulled out one of the last Butternut Squashes that we harvested and had positioned a sharp knife over it.  I really wanted to save it for later, when it got cold.  Butternut squash store nicely.  But it was not to be.  She plunged the knife deep into the flesh of the butternut, killing the squash along with my hopes of butternut squash soup on the first cold front of the season.

The squash was beautiful, orange, and meaty.  The color of the squash screams "fall" or "autumn!"  The temperature outside is still screaming, "SUMMER!"

Tricia always has fresh chicken broth stored in the fridge, so she was good to go as far as ingredients.  She started throwing things together in the kitchen.  She uses Emeril's recipe for Butternut squash soup.  It goes like this:

1 Butternut squash (approx. 2 lbs.)
2 T butter

1 Cup onion

1 1/2 tsp garlic

1 1/2 cup carrots, thinly sliced

1/2 tsp cumin, ground

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1 T jalapeno, finely minced

2 Cups chicken stock

1/4 cup cream

Cut the squash in half and scoop out seeds.  Peel and cut in 1" pieces.  Heat butter.  Add onions and garlic.  Cook about 5 minutes.  Add carrot, cumin, salt & pepper.  Cook 1 minute.  Add squash, jalapeno and stock.  Simmer for 15-20 minutes.  Puree.  Add Cream.

And here is the final product:

Hot soup on a hot day.  I added more jalapenos and some green onion tops for additional flavor.  This is some delicious soup.  I'm talking restaurant quality style.  So rich and smooth and creamy and tasty!

I asked Tricia for one favor.  I asked her to save some seeds from the pretty butternut.  She did just that.  She scooped out the seeds and put them in a bowl.

Then she washed off the stringy material and separated it from the seeds.  The seeds were placed on a paper napkin on the window sill to dry.  Once dry, I'll package them and label and date the package.

These were organic, open pollinated butternut squash so I should end up with good stock when these germinate.  I'll try to get some of these in the ground shortly so that we can enjoy many more soups, in cold weather this time.

Eatin' Like Kings (Onion Rings)

 I was inspired by a quote I read from the great thinker, Cookie Monster.  He once said:

"Onion Rings are just vegetable donuts."

We still have dozens and dozens of onions left over from the summer harvest.  We planted over 300 onion sets and harvested darn well all of them - a bumper crop.  We have been cooking them down with okra.  We slice them thin and enjoy them with cucumbers drizzled with balsamic vinegar, olive oil and salt and pepper.  We've air fried them and dipped them in a spicy dipping sauce.  We sauté them with chicken or with calf liver.  We make homemade pico de gallo and cook with them in every dish.  Despite our very best efforts and commitment, our onion supply is still well stocked.  

There's one other thing we wanted to do - make homemade onion rings!  In our little town there's an old fashioned drive in called The Rocket Drive Inn.  They make some really good homemade onion rings.  We very seldom fry anything.  When we do, we try to use the good oils like olive oil or coconut oil.  Today, Tricia wanted to make some homemade onion rings, and I encouraged her to roll with it.

To extend their life, we have them stashed away in cool spots.  Tricia grabbed a big, fat sweet yellow onion from storage.

Onion ring aficionados debate about which ones are best.  I've eaten some mighty fine ones sliced super thin and fried crispy.  I've gorged myself ones sliced fatter as well.  I don't think you can find a bad onion ring - except maybe the fake ones at a fast food drive in.  Tricia sliced them in wide rings and dipped them in a batter she whipped up.

They were dropped in hot oil on the stove top.  I was circling like a buzzard.

As quickly as Tricia would pull them out, we would scarf them down, hot and crispy.  If you allow them to cool, they get a little soggy and I like them crispy.  The pile on the plate never grew.  Look at those bad boys on the plate, would you?

We at the whole onion.  There was nothing left but a big, greasy mess in the kitchen to clean up.  But it was worth it.  My envie for onion rings was satisfied for the moment.  (Envie is Cajun for hungering or longing for something.  Southerners use the word 'hankering for' in the same context.)  I was stuffed.  I did tell Tricia we need to make those more often.  Perhaps we can diminish our stock of onions.

While I've got onions on my mind, there's a nice song by Robert Earl Keen called "Farm Fresh Onions."  Ol' Robert Earl Keen might like onions as much as I do:

Our Daily Bread

We talk a lot of simple pleasures in life.  One of those simple pleasures for us is a loaf of homemade sourdough bread.  Tricia keeps a batch of sourdough starter going at all times as she bakes a loaf of bread each week.  I can't remember when we last bought a loaf of bread from the grocery store.  The wholegrain bread we make is from a mixture of spelt and kamut wheat. 

The sourdough starter smells so good.  Oftentimes I'll walk in the kitchen and Tricia is popping the top off the starter to smell the fermentation going on.  She was getting everything ready last night to make a fresh loaf, so I thought I'd grab my camera and document the process.  Here she's poured some of the wheat flour into the mixing bowl and added the starter.

The dough hook attachment on the mixer works the dough and gets it all kneaded and ready.

For the last ten minutes, the dough is taken out of the mixer.  Tricia kneads it, folds it, presses it and works it really hard.

Then she works it some more.  The bread changes form with the kneading, getting more elasticity.

We like to bake in stoneware loaf pans.  The stoneware is brushed down with coconut oil so the bread will pop out with ease after cooking.  Then we place the dough in the stoneware.

We cover it with a dishrag and will allow it to proof overnight.  In the winter time, when the house is cooler, we'll proof it in the warmer of the oven.

We began proofing at 10 pm.  Then here we are the next morning at 6 am.  Look at the difference of the photo above with the one below.  You can judge how much it has risen by looking at the distance between the rag and the bottom of the light plug receptacle in each.

The bread is put into the oven.  We call it Lovin' in the oven.  In just a skinny minute or two, the aroma of freshly baking bread fills the home with an irresistible fragrance.

“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” – James Beard

James Beard is right!  It is vitally important to cut a slice off while the bread is fresh from the oven, warm and soft.  I will fight you for the heel!  Spread some good homemade butter on the warm slice and it'll take your breath away.  That's some of the last butter from our cows for a while since we dried the cows off.

Give us this day, our daily bread...

For Every Time, There is a Season

In the late afternoons, Tricia and I try to get our steps in.  We have a step counter and the goal is 10,000 steps each day.  In our 3 acre pasture, if we don't cut corners and walk the perimeter, each lap is about 700 steps.  We walk, we talk, and we enjoy the sights and sounds of a country afternoon.  We are both in our mid-50's and, though we are active people, it helps to have some sort of an organized fitness routine and hold each other accountable (because I like to eat!)

The neighbor that lives in the house bordering our pasture hollered at me last week.  He said, "You're walking as I'm about to go inside and eat McDonald's," as he held up a brown paper bag.  On our walks, Tricia and I talk about our kids, goals, to-do lists, hypothetical situations and what we'd do.  It's a nice time.  We watch Belle run like wild in the pasture.  The cows, taking advantage of the relative coolness of the afternoon, munch on grass.  We can hear the crunching as they pull the grass with their tongues.

Time is fleeting, though.  Since we passed the Summer Solstice, the days are getting shorter.  In fact, for our zip code, here are the average sunrise and sunset times for the next six months:

July                 6:20 am    8:13 pm

August            6:38 am    7:50 pm

September      6:56 am    7:15 pm

October          7:14 am    6:39 pm

November      6:37 am    5:15 pm

December      6:59 am    5:14 pm

Look specifically at the sunset times I've highlighted over the next several months.  Notice that just as the sunset is getting earlier, the sunrise is getting later.  The days are shortening.  For egg production, this is a bad time of year.  A hen's reproductive cycle is based on daylight hours.  It begins and picks up in spring when daylight hours reach 14 hours per day.  As the days get shorter, the amount of eggs the hens lay are reduced.  

We've pulled down our "Eggs For Sale" sign down that we keep posted by the road.  We have loyal customers and all are on the honor system.  We have an outdoor fridge in the garage and they pick up the amount of eggs they need and leave money in the butter dish in the fridge.  We're picking up only a dozen a day max right now and that's not enough for us to eat AND sell.  Our principle is to "eat all you can and sell the rest."  Right now, there's none left over to sell.

Our hens roam free on the 3 acre pasture, eating bugs, worms, grass, frogs, and whatever else they find to eat.  The yolks are rich and dark yellow.  The solution to increase egg production in the shortened days would be to put lights in our henhouse.  That's what the big egg production companies do to maximize production.  We decided not to do that early on.  Just as we need a break, the hens do, too!  We let them rest in the fall and winter.  They'll pick back up in the spring.

Introductions are in Order

In three days, it will have been 10 years since we first started this blog.  Where does the time go?  A good friend of our daughter suggested it might be a good idea to introduce the animals on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  What a great idea!  Over time, we've talked about each one, but it is a stellar idea to introduce each of them with a short bio.  

We live on a five acre piece of land with 3 acres in pasture.  As we introduce the animal family, you'll have two revelations: #1 That's a lot of animals on a little bit of land, and #2 These are some truly strange people!

Here.  We.  Go...

Here is Ginger, also known as "Gingivitis" or "Fat Cat."  She is an outdoor cat who loves to hunt.  We'll find the remnants of birds, mice, rats, moles, squirrels and various and sundry varmints that she occasionally leave us on the door mat.  Experience has taught us to look before we take that first step.  I'm not a 'cat person,' but Ginger is allowed from time to time to come inside.  

This is Belle, or affectionately known as "Bellie".  She is a Great Pyrenees Livestock Guardian Dog.  The name sounds helpful, but Bellie is a work in progress.  As it turns out, she eats live chickens.  Guarding them is a lofty goal as she's turned out to be the "fox" in the henhouse.  Literally.  She loves to roam and dig gargantuan holes wherever she goes.  She is a sweet dog, though, and we are trying to teach her, patiently, and overlook her shortcomings in hopes that she can be rehabilitated from her wayward proclivities.

This is Rosie, or Rose Ethel, as we sometimes formally address her.  She is a Jersey cow.  She's getting up there in age - about 13 years old.  She's given us many calves and given us gallons and gallons of fresh milk.  She does not like hot weather.  In the summer, she can be found lying in the shade, panting.  Like a pig, if she finds a muddy spot, she's not above lying in it and getting herself filthy.  She's gentle, as most Jersey's are.  

This lady is Clarabelle, or Clarice, for short.  She's also a Jersey cow who is about 10 years old.  She's a sweetheart.  We have been milking her everyday for the last year and four months.  We just dried her off.  She gives A2/A2 milk which is highly sought after.

May we also introduce you to Elsie.  Elsie is Clarabelle's heifer.  She's quarantined in a separate pasture as we're weaning her.  If allowed to be with Clarabelle, she'd nurse her, so she stays by herself.  That's why she looks forlorn.  The rest of the animals are just on the other side of the fence and we do put the goats in with her to keep her company from time to time, although she and the goats aren't fluent in the same language.

This little lady is LuLu.  LuLu is Rosie's heifer.  You may be wondering about the contraption in her nose.  It is a weaning plate.  The plate keeps her from nursing on Rosie while we dry Rosie off.  The plate doesn't hurt her (other than her feelings, perhaps).  She is industrious and figured out the first day how to continue to eat grass with it.  In a month, we'll loosen the wing nut and pull it out.  

We are watching the cycles of Rosie and Clarabelle.  When they go in heat, we'll mark the calendar and bring them down the road to be bred by a registered Jersey bull.  Late this fall or early winter, we'll bring Elsie and LuLu down to be bred by the same bull as they'll be of breeding age by then.

Meet Annie, the Nubian goat.  She's a dairy goat, originally from Africa.  Despite being black in color, the heat doesn't bother her.  She's the oldest goat on the farm and has given us many kids.  Her momma was Nellie, our first Nubian we ever got.  Goats multiply almost like rabbits since they lots of times have twins or triplets.

Here's Matilda.  We call her the "opportunistic one," because she'll always find a way to sneak stealthily into the barn and clean up any sweet feed the cows left behind.  She's fast.  Poor girl just lost both of her kids during kidding.  They were her first kids.  

This fellow is named Buckwheat, or Buckster, for short.  He's our Nubian buck and is quite a prolific gentleman who has fathered more animals than we can count.  He uses his head as a battering ram.  He also stinks something terrible!  We try to keep our distance from him.  He has an impressive beard.

This doeling is named Kaleidoscope.  We call her Callie, for short.  She's named appropriately for her multicolored face.  She's Annie's kid and was a bottle baby, since Annie had mastitis.  She cries incessantly for a bottle whenever we see her and like to jump up on you and get right in front of you when you're walking.   

May we introduce you to Mocha.  She's named for her light coffee latte colored spots that cover her body.  She's Agnes' daughter.  She and Callie are besties and they run around all day getting into all sorts of mischief.  If I had that energy, I tell you what...

Here is Popcorn, or Poppy, as we call him lots of times.  He's named that because when he was just a little guy, he'd jump around just like popcorn in a hot skillet.  He is the only other male ruminant on the pasture other than Buckwheat.  

And the last member of the goat family, Agnes, or "Horned One."  She was picked on mercilessly by the other goats when she was just a kid.  We did not de-horn her.  Now, despite her small stature, her horns have enabled her to gain prominence and now she's the de facto boss, exerting her will, by ramming the others with her horns.  The others have paid a steep price for their earlier bullying of her.  Agnes has never forgiven them.  She can be a mean little momma, for sure.

We have more chickens that we can name, so we call all the hens, Sally, after Sally Henny penny from Beatrix Potter stories we read to the kids when they were young.

And finally, here is Sally and Sally putting in a hard day's work at the office, laying fresh eggs for us.  Happy hens, to be sure.  It's a good life.

And there you have it, the animal family that make up the menagerie at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm!

Random Thoughts on a Thursday

"The preacher man says it's the end of time

And the Mississippi River, she's a-goin' dry

The interest is up and the stock market's down

And you only get mugged if you go downtown"

That's the opening lyrics to "Country Boy Can Survive" by Hank Williams Jr.  I've been thinking about that song a lot while driving, trying to digest bad economic news, rising consumer pricing, and a severe erosion in the purchasing power of the monopoly money in our wallets.  Somehow we've gotten ourselves beholden to Big Politicians, Big Bankers, and Global Puppetmasters that pull all the strings.  I'd like to just ignore it, but it greatly affects everyone, especially if you find yourself on a fixed income.

But, you know, the Lord's in control.  There's an old hymn that has lyrics that are much more optimistic than 'Ol Hank's song.  It goes like this:

Many things about tomorrow,

I don't seem to understand;

But I know who holds tomorrow,

And I know who holds my hand.

God's given us sound minds and I believe we're to use them.  They're saying that food shortages, or at least even more increases in food prices, are on the horizon.  Might be a good idea to put a few things in the pantry.  We've got eggs!  We eat a LOT of eggs in our house.  But we're in the dog days of summer and the egg production has plummeted like the value of 401-k's.  This was all we collected from the hen house (and all their other hiding places) yesterday.  Slim pickin's, indeed!

Tricia has been dry canning rice and also beans in the oven at 200 degrees for an hour.  If you do it right, it'll be good for 20 - 25 years stored like that.  It kills any bugs and/or eggs in the rice and beans.

One thing we WON'T have in a food shortage is milk.  Yep, we dried off both of our milk cows.  We have been milking for a year and four months straight.  It is time for a break - for both us AND the cows.  Our plan is to bring both milk cows to be re-bred and then in late fall, we'll bring both of our heifers to be bred for the first time.  So we'll be without milk for almost a year!

The milking stalls are lonely and it is quiet in the barn now in the mornings!  It gets so hot in the summer milking in there, even with the fans blowing.

One thing that we'll save money on is dairy cow feed!  When the cows aren't producing milk, we let them just eat the grass in the pasture.  The sweet feed in our feed room is gonna really last now.  The local feed store is going to miss us!

We'll just have to remind ourselves that God is in control.  We should pray and we should take action by preparing and planning and planting.

A Solution for an Age-Old Problem

Our laying hens have been donating fresh country eggs for as many years as I can shake a stick at.  We love those fresh eggs and collect them every day.

There is only one problem with a FRESH laid eggs.  They are very hard to peel.  Oh, you can peel them, but the eggs look horrible.  Why is this?  Well, a fresh egg's proteins bond to the membrane instead of each other.  When you boil them and peel them, the white sticks to the membrane just inside the shell, resulting in an ugly, pitted egg.  This means Tricia can't make pretty boiled eggs or deviled eggs for the ladies luncheon at church!  What to do!?!?

Turns out there's a solution that my wife learned that works!  Instead of boiling the eggs, you steam them.  What you're looking at below is a pot of boiling water in which a tray with holes in it (from our canner) is placed on top.  The boiling water beneath the tray STEAMS the eggs for about 15 - 20 minutes.

After that time, the eggs are submerged in cool water to cool them down.

Tricia then peels them under a stream of cool water.

Voila!  Perfect fresh peeled eggs without a flaw!

We were glad to learn the secret to this problem.  We've created workarounds by putting the eggs for boiling aside for "aging."  Once the eggs are a few weeks old, they peel better.  But with this process, we don't have to do that anymore.  How does this new process work?  I'm not sure, but I would guess that since the outer eggshells of the eggs are porous, the steam must work it's way inside the egg and release the bond of the proteins in the white from the membrane.  Just a guess.  Whatever it is, it works!

It Doesn't Look Good, But it Tastes Great!

Last night I showed you that we planted some cowpeas in the garden plot in the side yard.  The three rows in our main garden are about to play out and it was time to get some new ones planted to have peas consistently coming in.  It is important in these crazy times to have food in your pantry and food in your garden.

Tonight I'd like to show you another sort of strange crop we have growing:  Black Turtle Beans.  They are, as the name suggests, black.  They are called turtle beans because they have a hard outer shell.  This bean is popular in Latin America and Cuba.  I harvested a bucket of them the other day.  I let these dry on the bush before picking.

I meant to save a photo of the black beans after I shelled them, but Tricia started cooking them before I was able to get a shot.  Suffice it to say, they are black and shiny.  We like to make refried black beans and use them as a dip to eat with chips.  We soak the beans for 7 hours in water and a some Apple Cider Vinegar.  We rinse the beans and cook them like you would any other bean.  When they are done, we pour most of the water off, add some oil and 'fry' them in a skillet until the consistency is like that of bean dip.

Then we dip our Blue Corn chips into our refried Black Beans for a delicious snack!

It may not look pretty, but it tastes great!  I saw the black beans were blooming again in the garden.  Perhaps we'll get another harvest.

A Brief Work Excursion AND Planting More Protein

I was out of pocket for a few days.  Russ, our oldest son, looked after the animals, fed them, gathered eggs and everything else that needs to be done around the homestead.  Tricia and I journeyed out to Baton Rouge for a couple of days for a work conference.  The Company put us up in a hotel that overlooked the Mississippi River.  We watched tug boats push long lines of barges stacked back to back up and down the river.

I attended meetings, but there was some fun intermixed and good eating, of course.  One adventure was a bus trip to TopGolf.  Let me be clear - I am not a golfer.  Back in the 80's, I went golfing for the first time in my life.  I teed off and the ball sliced or hooked or whatever you call it.  I knew that you needed to holler something, so I yelled, "Fore!"  A gentleman on the next green got out of his golf cart, looked my way and yelled, "What?"  Just at that time, my golf ball hit him square in the forehead.  A lump immediately grew on his head like in the cartoons.  He was very angry.  I realized that golf was a sport that required a lot of practice AND that I was dangerous at this thing.  Someone could get seriously injured.  I have not been on a golf course since then.

TopGolf is different.  It is more like bowling than golf.  A ball comes out, you hit it and you get points if you land the ball in lit up circles.  There is some sort of computer tracking of the ball.  It reads your score on a computer screen.  Food is served and everyone has a nice time.  Here is Tricia teeing off.

There are hundreds of bays and hundreds of people playing.  We were on the third floor.  The smile on my face shows my relief in that I didn't hit anyone with an errant ball.

While a golf club is a strange implement in our hands, a garden hoe and rake is not.  Last week once the rains came through, I got busy and planted two more 45 foot rows of Ozark Razorback Peas and Blackeyed Peas.  With threats of food shortages and inflation, I figured we'd get some more protein planted.  Rice and Peas with a little smoked tasso for flavor is a nutritious, quick, hearty, tasty meal.  

This planting was an experiment of sorts.  I was checking the germination in some OLD seed I had saved many years ago.  Both of the containers of saved seed were labeled with the name of the seed (Ozark Razorback and Blackeye - both Southern cowpeas).  They were also labelled with the year I saved them.  2012!!!  You read that right.  I saved them ten years ago.  Counting on diminished germination, I planted them one inch apart rather than the normal four inch spacing.  Look what happened:

The germination on the decade-old seed was pretty doggone good!  There are a few gaps, but they'll fill in.  Not too shabby.  Once the peas were up three inches or so, I pulled the mulch around the plants to discourage weed growth and preserve soil moisture.

We're still picking purple hull peas, ozark razorback peas, and blackeyed peas from the current garden.  When those play out, these will be ready for harvest.  It will soon be time to start planting the fall crop.  I'm looking forward to that!