I've had a 'hankerin' for some good Southern cooking for a while now as I've watched our mustard greens get large and leafy. Mustard greens served over some hot, fresh cornbread is a delicacy and will satisfy that desire. So I asked Tricia to make some homemade cornbread and get the skillet ready and I'd do the rest.
I went to the garden and pulled a big bunch of mustard greens (along with a head of purple cauliflower), brought them inside and washed up the leaves. Little bugs, dirt, worms and other critters like the mustard leaves almost as much as I do, so you have to make sure you've cleaned them up good. Once cleaned, we strip the leaves off the stem.
Mustard greens cleaned and stripped from the stems
Once the skillet is nice and hot, we drop some butter in to coat the bottom of the pan and drop the greens in the skillet, adding some water to cook them. Of course some salt and pepper is added as well.
Fresh greens in the skillet
I peeked in the oven as I smelled the rich, intense fragrance of cornbread that was wafting through the kitchen, beckoning family members to the supper table. It was golden brown and done!
Homemade Cornbread
We all lined up at the stove top, cutting nice big slices of cornbread and putting a link or two of smoked sausage on the plate. Some might put their mustard greens on the side, but I like to spoon my greens over the cornbread, allowing the pot liquor to saturate the cornbread. Pot liquor is the broth of the mustard greens that is left in the bottom of the pot. It is rich in vitamins and nutrients and borders on a sinful act, if you pour it down the drain.
Fresh mustard over cornbread alongside smoked sausage - Now we're talking!
I learned that some vitamins (like Vitamin C) and minerals in fresh greens are water soluble, meaning that cooking them leeches them out into the water that you cook them in. If you throw it out, you are almost defeating the purpose of eating fresh greens. With that being said, you might get the idea that this is something you must eat because it's good for you. Well, of course, but better than that - it's GOOD! A delicious meal that satisfied my hankering - why, that's a little slice of heaven right there!
Each year we order around a hundred or so Cornish Cross Meat Chickens and we raise them from baby chicks until they are between 8 and 10 weeks old. Then we butcher the birds, cut them up in eight pieces and freeze them in gallon size freezer bags. This allows us to enjoy chickens for an entire year - chickens that we know have no antibiotics, no hormones, and no medicine added. We think they just taste better and are better for you than the store bought birds.
I did things a little different this year to experiment. First, we normally order the baby chicks to be delivered in two batches - late December and early January. What we've noticed is that during those times we experience bad weather with freezing conditions and rain. My hypothesis is that even though we have a heat lamp over them, the chicks are burning calories keeping warm that they could be using to grow. Warmer temps should result in a more efficient use of calories and I want to test out that theory. Secondly, in January and February, there is not a whole lot of grass growing in the pasture for them to eat as I push them to a fresh area each day. Ordering them a month and a half later, we should be able to see more favorable growth patterns due to the temperature and additional grass for them to forage on in addition to the feed.
I'll post once a week status updates on the birds to test out our theory. I like a set method of doing things, and we've been pretty successful raising chickens over the years, but I'm open to learning better ways. I ordered the birds online and on Tuesday, February 10th, I got an email from the hatchery that our birds had shipped and that we could expect them at the Post Office within 72 hours. Thursday morning at around 6:00 am we received a call from the Post Office stating, "We have a package for you. It's ALIVE!" Tricia motored downtown and picked up a box of chicken.
Box of chicks
It's always amazing to me that you can ship live baby birds that are a day old and they can make it alive to their destination. Here's how they do it: They are packed together mighty tight. Chicks must not be claustrophobic creatures. When we open the top of the box, here's what we find: they are packed like sardines. The way they are packed actually helps them because they keep each other warm during shipping. That is vital.
Secondly, they don't have food or water for 3 days. The way they accomplish that is that prior to hatching, the chicks eat the egg yolk, giving them nutrition to make it for the 3 day transit period. Pretty neat, huh?
Opening up the box
Baby chicks are some cute little boogers. There is something uplifting about holding a baby chick in your hands. They are a little puff ball, light and full of energy. Too bad they don't stay cute for long, so we enjoy this stage while we can.
Baby Chick
The very first thing we do is fill the chick waterers with water and dip their little beaks into the water and make sure that all of them drink. I've read that you can even add some honey to the water for extra energy. It's been a long trip and they've got to be thirsty, so we ensure they wet their whistles.
Time for a drink
Chicks will sip the water and then lift their heads, tilting them back and swallow. We make sure that all have swallowed and then we put them down in the brooder. We ordered 110 chicks this year and I'll explain further - I have another experiment going on. I ordered 100 Cornish Cross Meat birds and, as a first for us, I ordered 10 Red Rangers.
The Cornish Cross birds are freaks of nature. They are like machines and have been bred to grow astronomically fast, turning protein from the feed into muscle. They aren't much on grazing. They mainly eat, poop, and sit down. They are ready for butchering in 8 short weeks. The Red Rangers, by comparison, are a meat bird that are more 'natural.' They graze more on grass and are ready for butchering in 12 weeks. I wanted to try a batch of these and see how we do with them.
This chick quenched his thirst
After watering each chick and counting them, we actually had 117 chicks delivered versus the 110 ordered. Lots of times hatcheries do this. Invariably, there are babies that perish during transit, like the two you see in the box below. Although the hatcheries have an 'honor system' where you call in if you have loss during transit, the extra they give you generally make up for any you lose. Even the dead chicks help us out as we bury them in the compost pile. So 117 minus 2 = 115 birds.
RIP little chicks
You don't have to purchase a fancy set-up to raise chickens. The investment can be as little or as great as you want. I have a brooder I built on the left and a chicken coop that I altered on the right to be a brooder. You have to keep the chicks warm or they will die. To accomplish this I anchored a rope onto the garage door and stretched and attached it to a ladder on the other side that I weighed down with a sack of feed. Then I have 3 heat lamps hanging off the rope providing the heat they need. We have 35 chicks in each compartment of the brooder on the right and 45 in the one on the left. If you're wondering where the cars are, they are outside. Baby chicks trump the cars for garage space during the 2 - 4 week time frame we have them in the brooder. If the weather cooperates, I'll try to move these out sooner.
Our makeshift brooders
The first week of their lives they need to be kept at 95 degrees, the second week, 90 degrees and reducing the temperature by 5 degrees until they are ready to go outside. The chicks will tell you if they are too hot or too cold - you simply have to watch them. If they are piled up on top of each other in a tight ball, you need to lower the heat lamp. If there is an empty space beneath your lamp and the chicks are scattered away from the lamp, you know you need to raise it as the chicks are too hot. When they are scattered out evenly like in the photo below, you know the temperature is just right.
Comfortable baby chicks.
We place the waterers in the brooder along with a feed tray and we're diligent about keeping their water and feed filled at all times. They will eat and drink voraciously, so you have to be on your toes. Once a week we will give status updates on our birds and we'll weigh them and report on their growth and the results of our experiments.
Love that chicken from Popeye's? Nah, we love that chicken from Our Maker's Acres Family Farm!
Saturday was a red-letter day. We got up and got all our chores done and Benjamin headed off for the State Livestock show with his heifer, Amy. Russ was in from college and we changed the oil in his pickup truck, chopped a stump down to ground level, and built another set of roosts in the hen house.
After the initial carrot harvest, I left some of the smaller carrots in the ground to grow for a while. I figured now was as good a time as any to harvest one of the remaining rows. I pulled half of a 5 gallon bucket full of carrots and washed them up real good outside and then brought them in to process further.
More Carrots
We've eaten a bunch raw, blanched and frozen some, and have more in the fridge to eat. We realized that we hadn't made any Ginger Carrots yet. We learned to make them from a recipe in Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions cook book. This is an easy recipe that is a good initiation into lacto-fermentation. We always make Ginger Carrots and eat on them for several months (or as long as they last) in the fridge. We doubled the recipe in order to make 2 quarts. Here's what we did:
First we peeled the carrots. We save the carrot tops and peelings to either feed to the chickens and cows or to compost.
Peeled Carrots
We put the shredding blade on the food processor and shredded until we had eight (8) cups of beautiful shredded orange carrots.
Fresh shredded carrots - not an hour out of the ground
You pour 8 cups shredded carrots, 2 tablespoons freshly grated ginger, 2 tablespoons sea salt, and 8 tablespoons (or half a cup) of whey. Tricia had made some kefir and was allowing the whey to drip out of it into a measuring cup.
Separating the whey out of the homemade yogurt
Once she had half a cup, she poured that in a large plastic bowl. In this case we use the top to a cake carrier.
Pouring the whey on top of the salt, ginger, and shredded carrots
I then use the head of a wooded mallet to pound the carrots into the whey, salt, and ginger, bruising the carrots and incorporating all the juices together. I pounded until the carrots were all beaten up.
Pounding the carrots
Using a canning funnel, I moved equal amounts into two wide mouth quart jars and crammed the carrots down until they were packed tight and the carrot juice barely covered the top.
And now... the work is done. Simply cover the jars tightly and allow to sit at room temperature for 3 days. After 3 days move them to the fridge. We generally put off eating it for 3 weeks as we find the flavors get better with age.
Lacto-fermented Ginger Carrots
This is one of those things that is good AND good for you. We'll open a jar and eat it as a condiment before we start our evening meal. According to what we read, eating ginger carrots is a great aid in digestion.
Daisy is the matriarch of Our Maker's Acres Family Farm. She's the oldest Jersey cow on our farm and will turn 8 years old in June. When we purchased her, she came alongside her mom, Buttercup. Daisy makes delicious milk with thick cream. She is a bossy, headstrong cow, but she's like a member of the family.
We know our animals and watch them closely to assess their behavior. The other day we noticed that she was limping a little bit and could tell that she was favoring her back leg on her left side. We had to take a look and see what the problem was and determine how to treat it. This sometimes proves to be tricky on a large animal. If a cow kicks you, it can be a painful and dangerous situation. We have a nifty device called "Kow Kan't Kick" that we use for this purpose.
You can see it in the photo below. You slip it over her backbone and it has two arms that go right in her 'armpits.' Then you crank it tight with the crank on top. This disables her ability to kick.
Kow Kan't Kick
We pulled the rope tight to ensure she didn't have slack. She is known for making trouble. Of course she immediately got all nervous when I put the Kow Kan't Kick apparatus on her and you can see above that she lifted her tail and immediately pooped and peed to let us know she was not appreciative of this loss of freedom.
Cut me some slack
Tricia held her steady because with the device on, they lose their balance. While Tricia held Daisy upright, I got behind her and lifted her hoof. Yep, just as I suspected, Daisy has a touch of foot rot. We have had wet, muddy conditions for several weeks and that contributes to the problem that is caused by an organism called Fusiformis necrophorus. I learned that from reading Keeping a Family Cow by Joann S. Grohman. It is a great book that teaches you everything you need to know about tending to your family cow.
Foot rot is a pretty easy condition to treat for sheep and goats and I've treated many of them. Fortunately, we caught Daisy's problem early. It wasn't pus-filled and didn't stink. It was just tender and sore. Well, we are going to do what we can to remedy the situation. First, while I had her leg up, I cleaned out the area between her hooves with a knife, checking to see that there wasn't a nail, wire, rock or stick causing the tenderness. Nope. Funny thing is, it didn't stink. Goats feet stink horribly when they have this ailment. It was clear to see where the problem was. You can see below on the back of her foot, the skin area is decomposing a little bit, pulling away from the hooves.
Daisy's foot rot
The best way we've found to treat it is to liberally spray down the area with Iodine. This antiseptic will clean up the area and disinfect it. We've seen it work its magic overnight on Annie the goat. I held Daisy's foot up and sprayed the hoof area real good.
Iodine
We will check on her again tomorrow and treat her again until we can't notice a limp. Cows need to be able to walk about and eat hay and grass and not be limited by an ailing foot We've got to get things fixed soon. Dry weather would help as well, although I see we're expecting rain again next week.
Hopefully Daisy will be walking better on her leg tomorrow after the treatment.
If the weather cooperates, I usually try to plant potatoes around Valentine's Day. I asked Tricia to keep her watchful eye for when Seed Potatoes arrive at the Feed Store for sale. Sure enough, she showed up with a box of seed potatoes - both red and white ones.
We had a nice crop of potatoes last year and we've been successful in storing them for months with little to no spoilage, simply by not washing them after harvest and putting them in stacked milk crates that allow good airflow, and then storing them in a cool, dark place. This just happens to be a little closet we call the 'mud room.' We keep the door shut and there is an air conditioning vent that keeps it nice and cool.
In a decision that may prove to be in error, I asked her to go back and get some more seed potatoes. I put them on the scale and we have a hair over 11 pounds of seed potatoes. Although I can't remember, last year I think we planted between 3 and 6 pounds of Pomme de Terre (Apples of the Earth)! I assure you, if we plant too many this year, they won't go to waste.
Seed Potatoes from Parsley's Feed Store in Jennings
Last year we were able to save some potatoes that we harvested from our Spring potato crop to use as seed potatoes in planting our inaugural Fall potato crop. I learned that we planted a little bit late. For 2015, I'll get them in the ground sooner.
Now you can see that the seed potatoes have some nice, healthy eyes growing. Each eye will grow its own potato plant. Although you can plant an entire potato, I think it's best to cut them up and that was my task night before last.
The Eyes of the Potato
All you need is a sharp knife and a watchful eye. The goal of this endeavor is to cut the potato up so that each chunk of potato has an eye on it. Depending on the size of the spud and the number of eyes on it, I'll cut them into as few as two pieces or as many as four. The trick is, you don't want to cut the eye itself, so when you slice the potato, you spin it around the backside to ensure you aren't cutting one. You also want the chunks to be of a good size as the growing potato plant uses the potato itself as 'food' to grow on. Cutting it too small would mean the young plant wouldn't have enough nutrition to grow well.
I cut this one in two pieces. Can you spot the eyes on each side? Each piece of potato below will develop it's own distinct plant, yielding a nice bounty of delicious new potatoes that we'll enjoy cooked with butter and fresh picked green beans in about 3 and a half months. <Stomach growls at the thought of this event>
The Eyes have it
You don't want to immediately go and put the cut up seed potatoes in the ground. That would result in some of them rotting. After cutting them up, I'll leave them in a box and stir them gently for about a week or until the cut pieces develop a 'scab.' That simply means the fresh cut has healed and dried. I counted them up and once I finished, I had 117 individual potato chunks to plant! Not all of them will grow, but the majority will, and that is a lot of potatoes. I'll normally dig up young potato plants and replant them in the gaps in the row where the seed potatoes didn't sprout to ensure I have an efficient use of garden area.
Curing, cut-up Seed Potatoes
I'll watch these closely until the perfect day arrives to plant them. According to the 2015 Farmer's Almanac, on February 14 - 15, it says "Any root crops that can be planted now will do well." Looking at the box of cut up potatoes naturally makes me a little hungry. I could just as easily take the box inside, slice them up, and eat them. But that's a little lesson in delayed gratification you learn in gardening (and life): Hopefully, by foregoing satisfaction and enjoyment now, you'll experience an eight to tenfold reward in the future at harvest time. We DID see that last year. I wish I could say the same about my investments over the years... Oh well.
Now we just wait and see if we have good planting weather on the 14th or 15th.
The chickens are gradually starting to lay more and more after the normal winter dormancy brought about by reduced daylight hours and less nutrition out on the pasture for them to eat. In Late December and early January, we gather maybe an egg or two a day. On a good day we'll pick up three. However, in February, it's like a switch gets turned on and suddenly you'll pick up nine eggs, a dozen the next day and two dozen the next.
A dozen and a half eggs today
We pick up an odd assortment of eggs sometimes. Our brown egg layers, Barred Rocks and Rhode Island Reds, and our Aracaunas, that lay blue and green eggs make a pretty, colorful basket. In the photo below you can see on the far left an egg that was surely the first egg laid by a Barred Rock or Rhode Island Red pullet. We call them pullet bullets. They start off very small, but soon they are normal size.
Pullet's first egg (left), Aracauna egg (middle), Barred Rock or RIR egg (right)
Here's another odd thing to see. Benjamin has a abnormally large egg in his right hand and an abnormally small egg in his left. As we discussed, the small one is a pullet's first egg. The big one, well, it looks like that might have hurt coming out! The hen walking funny tomorrow will be the tell tale sign that she laid it.
Big & Small
Here's another picture that highlights the difference in size. If you crack open the small egg, you find that the yolk is the size of a normal yolk. There's not much 'white' in the little pullet egg.
But what do you find in the large egg. I had a suspicion, but I wanted to know for sure, so we cracked it open.
Yep, sure enough, it was a double-yolked egg. What causes this? I learned that it is pretty rare in store bought eggs, because they are candled and double-yolkers are discarded. So if you buy your eggs from a store, you may never see one. If you have hens, you'll see some, although they are still pretty rare. Some of it is hereditary, but some of it is similar to a car back-firing. It is a mistake or mis-firing in which the ovary releases the yolk into the oviduct. Sometimes the yolks are released too close together resulting in a double yolked egg.
Double-yolked egg
Double-yolked eggs are safe to eat, but we fed this one to the dogs since it had a tinge of blood in it. I also read that sometimes pullets will lay the small eggs and then lay a huge double-yolk egg before their egg laying system gets into a normal groove. You know how it goes? Sometimes we experience some 'glitches' in our system.
"Therefore my brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the LORD, knowing that your toil is not in vain, in the LORD." 1 Corinthians 15:58 NASB
I seem to remember a poster that was popular a long time ago that had a kitten hanging onto a rope with a knot on the bottom of it. I believe the caption said something like, "When you are at the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and HOLD ON!" I was thinking about how fast things change and just pondering how life is like a fast moving river, carrying things far downstream in a fast-moving current that is relentless and never rests. If you don't have things that you hold dear tied securely with a rope (to continue the metaphor), those things will be swept away as you watch helplessly as they drift around the bend and out of sight never to return.
What are those things that you hold onto? What are the non-negotiables that you're not letting go of come hell or high water? I know it might seem like a wide chasm to jump from a Bible verse to a country & western song to make my point, but amazingly, there is a country song right now that contains the things I wouldn't let go of in exactly the order I'd list them:
1. My Faith
2. Your Love (spouse, kids, family, friends)
3. Our Freedom
The song is called, "I Hold On" by Dierks Bentley. If you have the opportunity, click on the arrow below to watch the video with the lyrics.
If you can't view the video, I've copied the lyrics below for your reading. You might be familiar with the song. It has a catchy tune with emotional, heartfelt lyrics.
"I Hold On" By Dierks Bentley
[Verse 1]
It's just an old beat up truck,
Some say that I should trade up
Now that I got some jangle in my pocket.
But what they don’t understand
Is it's the miles that make a man.
I wouldn't trade that thing in for a rocket.
What they don’t know is my dad and me–
We drove her out to Tennessee
And she’s still here and now he’s gone
So I hold on.
[Verse 2]
It's just an old beat up box,
Its rusty strings across the top
It probably don’t look like much to you.
But these dents and scratches in the wood,
Yeah, that’s what makes it sound so good.
To me it's better than brand new.
You see this here flat top guitar,
Has had my back in a million bars
Singing every country song
So I hold on.
[Chorus:]
To the things I believe in
My faith, your love, our freedom
To the things I can count on
To keep me going strong
Yeah, I hold on, I hold on.
Like the stripes to the flag,
Like a boy to his dad
I can't change who I am, right or wrong
So I hold on.
So how about that? It's like poetry to me and I can really relate to what he's singing about - holding on to things that matter - things that stand the test of time. Clinging to the things that matter. The American experience has been underscored by innovation and change. New things aren't bad and change isn't bad. Oftentimes change is very good and an improvement over the old, but I think it depends on exactly what you are replacing the old with. I think change or 'progress' needs to be measured by the totality of their consequences - both intended and unintended.
For example, we recently had our upstairs hot water heater go out after 14 years of providing nice, hot showers. Fortunately, the pan underneath the hot water heater caught all the leaking water and directed it outside via PVC piping. I shopped around and compared different water heaters' pricing and reviews and finally settled on what I thought was a good deal. My Dad came and helped me remove the old heater and replace it with the new one. New is always better right? Nope. The old hot water heater was well-constructed, with heavy brass fittings and lasted 14 years. The new hot water heater had all plastic fittings and is guaranteed to last only 6 years. Progress? Hardly.
From a quick glance, all looks good, but when you take a closer look, you realize that what you've got is a cheap imitation. Something you can't count on. Something not built to last. The new isn't all that it's cracked up to be. And that is a pretty good illustration of what I'm pondering. The 3 main things I hold onto: my faith, love, and freedom, are iron-clad, solid, built to last - the equivalence of brass fittings, not plastic junk that will become brittle and crack over time.
I want something that will last and so I've got to hold on TIGHTLY to my faith, your love and our freedom. Holding on requires a certain amount of stubbornness and deliberate, purposeful resolve. I want to be faithful in holding on to all three.
Hebrews 10:23 "Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for HE is faithful that promised;)
