Cold Pack

Well, I'm not quite done with the beef yet; I brought home a tub of meat to can.  Canned meat is what we call "cold pack."  When we were cutting up the meat for hamburger we saved out the better pieces, which are cut into chunks, and canned in glass jars.  You use the pressure cooker to can the jars--each batch takes a couple of hours.  When it is finished, you have meat that you can store on a shelf and is pre-cooked, rather than taking up space in the freezer.  We can deer meat in this way too.  When I butchered my chickens in November, I canned all the meat from them in this way as well.  It is so handy to be able to just grab a jar and dump it in a pot and just heat it up since it has already been cooked.  It is perfect for things like noodles and soup.  It makes the meat so tender.  When I did the deer meat, I added garlic to each jar to give it a nice flavor.  This time, with the beef, I put a slice of onion in the bottom of each jar then added a dash of salt and pepper.  It is going to be so tasty!

We like to pack our meat in wide mouth pint jars.  (Jill I'm using some of the lids and rings you gave me--thanks!)

Eight pints will fit in one load.  During the summer I do most of my canning on an outdoor propane stove so I can get more than one pressure cooker going at once.  I wish I could do that now since meat takes so long to cook, but it's way too cold out for that!  Since I can only fit one pressure cooker on our stovetop at once, I just have to do one batch at a time.

First batch is cooking.  Looks like the stove says 6:19 (PM).

Two batches finished.  Last one is in the canner.  It's going to be finished about 12:30 (am).  I definitely inherited my father's "night owl" gene; I'm constantly starting projects in the evening that keep me up very late.  It would be fine if I didn't have to get up so early everyday! (and tomorrow is a 6am yoga day. . .)

Moo

Today we butchered 3 cows.  We got a half of one beef.  Hanging weight of our half was 406 lbs. and we ended up with 305 lbs. of meat.  That's a LOT of meat.  We will be eating well!  It was a great day with good friends.  Here are some pictures for those who are curious--Ash if you are reading this, don't scroll down. :-)

Dad

Dave

Wyatt marked a lot of the packages.  So cute!

Brenda and Karen--happy packers.

Mark--the real butcher.  He ran the saw.

Crockpot city.  Mmmm. . .so good!

Darrell grinding the burger.

Bill holding up the counter.

Mia scribbled on some of our packages too.

Quite a crowd. 

Many hands make light work--done with all three cows by about 6:30.

Friday Night Fun!

Tomorrow is beef butchering day so I spent a VERY cold afternoon in the garage finishing organizing the freezer.  It took me almost three hours but it looks pretty good, if I do say so myself, and I managed to free up two whole shelves for beef.  We will be butchering at our friends' farm and everyone is taking a covered dish to share.  Mom and I decided on a crockpot of chicken noodles.  Upon discovering we were out of noodles (we usually have a large bag on hand that mom buys at Sam's Club), she and I debated about buying some or making them ourselves.  Now, I can remember my mom making homemade noodles a lot when I was kid but she hasn't done that in I'd say at least 20 years.  I have never made them.  My friend Laura and I were always going to learn to make them together and never did.  So, tonight mom and I decided to make noodles together. (Now that's what I call Friday night entertainment!)  I'm so glad we did!  It was fun and cheap and we did two batches in less than an hour.  I don't know why it took me until I was thirty years old to have my mom show me how to do this; it was easy!!

Getting ready: Eggs, Flour, Rolling Pin

Flour and Eggs and a pinch of salt, then mix.

Rock and Roll!!

  

 We started cutting them with a knife, then discovered that the pizza cutter was much easier!

And that's how it's done!  Now it just has to dry.

One batch done--let's do another!

     Two batches of noodles.  In the morning they'll be dry and ready to go.

Newly organized freezer.  Where's the beef?

Chicken Hotel

Most of you know that I have chickens.  This fall I "culled the flock" as a lot of my hens were getting kind of old (two years is the peak production for laying hens and most of mine were at least three), leaving myself just about a dozen.  With all that extra space in the coop why not open a Chicken Hotel?!  Family friends decided to take a trip to India for the months of January and February.  We normally watch their dog Annie when they go on trips; this time I get to babysit their chickens as well!  (Haha, I know, "sucker" is written across my forehead!)  So, the first week in January I went over to their place and picked up their flock of a couple dozen chickens and brought them home.  These are not just run-of-the-mill chickens, mind you.  They are fancy rare breed and banty hens.  They are so cute especially the tiny banty hens, although, their equally tiny eggs do not exactly seem practical to me.  I hope my "guests" are find their accommodations to their liking!

   A good layer!

Fluffy!

This little guy thinks he rules the roost!

Enjoying breakfast!

It is nice to have these guest chickens right now since the small flock I had left was laying next to nothing. (I was really wondering why I hadn't just sent them all to the stew pot!)  What will I do when my visitors leave, you ask?  Never fear--I had a whole new batch of chicks arrive mid-December!  Hens will start laying at about five months, so these should be ready to produce along about May.  Chicks need to be kept very warm, so raising them in the winter seems like risky business.  However, my good friend Travis lent me his nice brooder, which has kept them nice and cozy.  Here they are at about a week old:

As you can see they are so cute and fluffy! 

Now, here they are about five weeks later--much bigger and a lot less cute.  They have definitely outgrown their brooder space!

So, today I had to "graduate" them from the brooder to a larger space.  This is a lot more difficult than it sounds because I have to keep them separate from the larger hens and they still need heat to keep them warm.  I decided the best way to do this was to take some old wire from the scrap pile and section off a corner of the coop and hang heat lamps from the ceiling.  It was a rather tricky job to do by myself, but I managed to construct a rather ramshackle partition for them.  Tonight and tomorrow will be a true test of how well this will work because it is supposed to be really cold.  I'm a little worried that my two heat lamps won't keep them warm enough.  I'll keep you posted as to their progress!

Grape Jelly Day

I decided that today would be the day I would unload our freezer of the large amount of grape juice I have stored in there and finally make some grape jelly.  Now, I didn't make this decision because because I'm feeling particularly ambitious.  Anyone that knows me very well, knows that I work best with deadlines.  I just found out that we will be butchering a beef this weekend, so unless I get the freezer cleaned out and organized, we will have no where to put it.  Currently, the main items taking up space in the freezer are fish and deer meat.  And, the aforesaid grape juice--and I mean a LOT of juice.  So, here is a little look at my jelly making project.

Here's the messy freezer.  Notice all the jars of juice in the door, plus there is a large plastic container full hidden under stuff on one of the shelves.  Also, notice the grape juice that dripped down the door.  A word of caution--when freezing liquids make sure you leave PLENTY of space at the top for expansion or this is what happens!  I thought I had left enough space but I was wrong and, trust me, even though it's frozen, it is still a sticky mess! 

                   After unloading everything from the freezer, I took it inside by the fire to start to thaw.

This is a copy of my Great-grandma Julia's cookbook.  It has a whole bunch of cool old recipes, especially for jellies and preserves.  I've seen the original and I think the date on it was somewhere around 1915; she would have been about 20 years old then.  She states that wild grapes make the best jelly.  There is even a wild grape-crab apple jelly recipe that sounds amazing.  Grandma writes:  "This combination has a especially fine 'tang' that makes it suitable as a relish for game or turkey."  Unfortunately, in September I'm way too busy to be out gathering wild grapes and crab apples, so that recipe will have to wait.  As it was, I was lucky to get these grapes harvested (off the neighbor's arbor), juiced, and put into the freezer.  The grapes are a really, really old concord type.

I don't use pectin in my grape jelly (and neither did Grandma.)  It takes longer to cook and it takes a little practice to know at what point to stop cooking, but you don't have to spend money for pectin, plus it takes less sugar.  My best advice for making any type of jam or jelly is to work in small batches.  It won't turn out if you try to do a whole bunch at once.  Also, wash the pot, utensils, stove, etc. in between each batch.  Otherwise, you've got a super-sticky mess on your hands before you know it.



Gathering Jars, Lids, and Rings.



Boiling a batch of jelly. 
This is one quart of juice to three cups sugar (makes four half-pints.)



Filling the jars.

Today's work.  I still have much more juice, but it's going to have to wait until tomorrow!

Who wants Grape Jelly??

Tea Tales

Recently, I went shopping for tea with my good friend Shannon.  I purchased a sampler pack of fancy herbal teas.  After I got home and drank a couple of the varieties I realized that I mostly just enjoy the lemon and mint ones.  I keep passing over the raspberry, blueberry, etc. packets.  The "fancy" tea flavors apparently don't appeal to my everyday tastes.  "This is silly," I thought!  I have several bags of dried lemon verbena and mint that I harvested from my herb garden this summer.  That's really just what I want; the "fancy" flavors will do for special occasions or company.  The lemon and mint are good by themselves or mixed together (which is how I usually do it.)  If I need a little pick-me-up I put a bag of regular black tea with it for a caffeine boost (I don't drink coffee, and I'm trying hard to stay away from pop.)  I always add a little dollop of Honeyrun Farm honey to my tea as well. :-) So, my lesson learned is that sometimes simpler is better, and that it's nice to be able to relax and enjoy a warm reminder of my summer garden on these cold winter days.  Come on over and share a cup with me soon! 

New Farm Blog!

Well, I was never good at journaling.  I don't know if I'll be any better at blogging, but I thought some of you might be interested in what I do on my farm, what things are in season, etc. so I'm going to give it a try.  Winter is the best time to get started on this and, hopefully, I can figure out how to post things and make this a nice blog.  I apologize in advance if I neglect to post things when it gets busy around here in the spring and summer.  However, since that's when all the interesting things happen, I'll try my best!