Garden produce…

Our little garden here is just going crazy and we’ve been enjoying all the fresh goodies it has been producing.  One of our favorites here lately that uses up a variety of different veggies have been to put them in omelets…

Home grown ingredients...

This omelet had summer squash, zucchini, chocolate peppers, onion, and cherry tomatoes…

They were sauteed up...

They were sauteed up with a little bit of left over ham from our late pig …

Add some homegrown eggs...

 

 

I did add some cheese, sorry no picture  as we ended up having company stop by and I felt a bit odd about taking pictures of the finished product, lol!  Anyhow it was deliciouso! While waiting for the eggs to cook through the veggies caramelize a bit and made it that much better.  One day for lunch I made a 14 egg omelet with some homemade hash browns for all us that turned out wonderful.  There is something deeply satisfying knowing that everything…or nearly everything, you are about to eat has travelled about 5 minutes away from the kitchen! 

Even the kids, after all they’re hard work in helping weed some of the garden, felt very proud in the fruits of their labors.  Knowing that they helped weed and mulch around the onion that we ate helps to keep them motivated in the garden.  They were even more excited in helping harvest some of the veggies.  The other night we harvested a nice bunch of broccoli and cauliflower that we later prepared for the freezer to save for this fall/winter for broccoli cauliflower cheddar soup.  They were all so excited the whole time knowing that later this year we would make their favorite soup with “stuff” that they helped pick and grow! 

Today they were busy picking peas, so I think we will steal some baby taters and have creamed peas and baby potatoes with maybe some deer steaks, biscuits and a big salad as we have lettuce galore and a bunch of tomatoes.

 

Erin

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Big Egg…

Teigen found this humongous egg the other day in the hen house…

A normal sized chicken egg and the huge Araucana egg...

Then it was decided that Garrett would get the honors of eating it.  The little boys all stood around waiting for it to be cracked and cheered when it landed in the pan…

A yummy double yolker!

The boys all agreed that it was nice to get a surprise every once in a while!

Friday Farm Daze…

Catching up on the week…

 

Sisters and best friends...

 

The making of Smores...

The start to a beautiful thing...

 

Zayne and Dash hanging out...

 

A brief glimpse of the sun...

 

Enjoying their new freedom...

 

Sawyer and Hayden going through the slush...

Dugur keeping his vigilant watch...

Mom's are fun jungle gyms...

Tori's Indian Runner Duck...

Cook Out…

We had our first official weenie roast last night.  Sawyer had been working around the barn yesterday clearing away old fence lines and picking up and piling various other treasures into a burn pile when he found an old cast iron trough.  Which gave me the *brilliant* idea of recycling it into a fire pit which in-turn made the kids think we should roast hot dogs…

Our new fire pit-recycling at it's finest!

Getting the picnic table ready...

The kids enjoying themselves...

I think the kids would be plumb happy to eat hot dogs for the rest of the week, Mark and I think otherwise!  However I *do* enjoy the lack of clean up that needs to happen afterwards!  We did pick up stuff to do smores with though today, mmmm!  

More kids having fun...

And here is a comparison picture of one our first born lambs and one of our last lambs born…

Black Licorice, one of our first born lambs vs. Blush, one of our last lambs...

Friday Farm Daze…catching up on the past week…

These last few weeks we have had a bit going on….

The hens threw an egg laying party…

I went to go collect eggs when the boys were gone this week and found three hens (a Buff Orpington, a Cuckoo 

Maran, and a Blue Andalusian) scrunched into 1 nesting box.

A cowboy being too cute...

Watching a beautiful sunset on another day...

Lambing...

Our first milking experience.....

We had a ewe with clogged teat, the wax plug couldn’t be sucked out by either of the lambs.  This left momma a bit lop sided and sore.  So after restraining her we were able to determine it wasn’t mastitis and unclogged the teat.  We milked her out on that side, froze some colostrum in a baggy and put the hungry lambs back on the newly milked down side and both momma and lambs were happy again.

Taking a nap...

The little boys and girls decided to switch bedrooms this week, leaving a tired Teigen who took a nap in a dresser drawer!

Re-creating supper...ram stew...yum!

We ended up having to butcher one of our rams because of horn issues and we had a leg of ram for Easter that was a huge hit.  It then lived on to be a wonderful stew found here.  I have a confession to make here….I don’t like lamb…there I said it…so why do I raise sheep?  To give me grey hair…oh no I guess that’s why I had so many kids.  ;D  I always thought it would be neat to raise sheep but what would I do with the meat?   Why raise something if you can’t enjoy consuming it… finally bit the bullet so to say and tried the Icelandic version of it…and now I’m hooked!  Even this 2 year old ram was milder than any other lamb I have tried thus far. It was so mild and actually tasted wonderful, not like an old sock.   Problem solved! 

Keeping predators at bay...

 I think I was nearly scared to death the other night!  At 2 am after checking ewes I checked to make sure the fence was plugged in by making the handle of the gate ark  with the hot wire when I pulled it close.  Last year we had 5 sheep killed by either coyotes or a mountain lion, so making sure the fence is on is very important.  The kids had been out earlier in the pasture flying kites and must not have plugged the fence back in, so I headed over to the pump house to plug it in.  The pump house is just yards from the house…I decided that night to just let Sawyer sleep and went all the way up to the barn in the dark by myself….and of course the whole way up there I’m thinking of mountain lions and coyotes as I walk past our ferocious sleeping-out like a light- guard dog and then all the way back down…so when I pointed my light over toward the pump house and seen two big glowing eyes and the outline of a big coyote…(at least he seemed big to a tired momma at 2 in the morning with an overactive imagination)  I nearly wet my pants… or screamed… or something.  But I must have scared it too ’cause it took off out there almost as fast as I did!  

Anyway, looking forward to more lambs this next week and playing in the garden.

This and That…

Toby the goaty playing king of the hill...

Araucana X Barred Rock rooster struttin' his stuff...

 

Gray badgerface Icelandic ewe grazing at dusk...

 

Dugur dog hangin' out...

 

Winter wheat coming up in the pasture...

 

Icelandic Lamb being too cute...

Zayne being cuter!

Pizza Fiasco

Looks good enough to eat...maybe!

Tonight while Sawyer and I did chores, the girls (Tori-13 and Maddie-10) made homemade pizza from scratch (even the dough!).  They did an excellent job and are such great blessings to me.  They only had one ency-wincy problem-you probably won’t even notice it in the above picture until I tell you. When Sawyer, Mark (he had just pulled up in the driveway), and I came in the door the timer was going off and the pizza should have been done.  I hear Tori in the kitchen talking to Maddie saying that it was odd that the cheese had not melted.  My first thought was that maybe she forgot to turn the oven on, but when I opened the oven door it was definitely warm.  So I touched the “cheese” and knew right away what the problem was…earlier I had asked Sawyer to bring in a big Ziploc bag full of mozzarella cheese from our chest freezer in the garage.  When the girls were making up the pizza Maddie had sampled some of the contents and told Tori she had thought that the “cheese” tasted funnyand that she thought it was goat cheese!  Anyway the cheese ended up being shredded hash browns!  Oh my!  So we ended up taking all the toppings off and scraping the hash browns off the crusts and replacing them with real cheese and then putting the toppings back on.  Much better!  Poor girls though, we giggled all through dinner!

Pizza with 'real' cheese!

It was almost as good as the time when Sawyer made tacos, but instead of using taco seasoning he used cinnamon!  After he put the cinnamon in, he realized what had happened and then added a whole bunch more taco seasoning to the meat.  Those were some interesting tacos!  Poor Uncle Jason he had to suffer through too on that night.  Oh well we all lived through and laugh and poke fun at each other when these little mishaps are brought up!

“A Rainbow of Flavor”

Food Fair Results

Yesterday Sawyer, Tori, Maddie and Garrett participated in the annual 4-H food fair. They worked hard all day Friday to prepare for the competition on Saturday, staying up well past 1 a.m. to put the final touches on their masterpieces. We only had one major disaster, which happened at the fore mentioned time of 1 a.m., involving one clover buds parfait glass, the only parfait glass in the house.  Luckily Grammy had a few to choose from and saved the day!  The competition lasted from 8:30 until 2:30 leaving everyone very tuckered out…especially mom!  We were well prepared this year and didn’t forget a single thing needed for the food fair, but we did forget the camera so no pictures. 😦   The theme for this year was “A Rainbow of Flavor”, and we had the following results:

Garrett's Participation Ribbon

 

 

This is Garrett’s last year as a clover bud, they have their own category and everyone is a winner in this group.  The judges ask them questions and sample their food, it’s great practice for the upcoming years.  Garrett took a Rainbow Chocolate Parfait, it had different colors of whipped cream layered with homemade chocolate pudding.

 

Madeline wins a Blue and Reserve Champion

 

 

 

Maddie is in the Junior division and won a blue ribbon in the ‘Salads’ catagory for her Rainbow Salad. She also won Reserve Champion in the ‘other desserts’ catagory for her lemon pound cake with vanilla pudding and fresh blueberries.

 

Victoria's two Reserve Champion Ribbons

 

 

 

This was Tori’s first year in the senior division and she  ended up winning two Reserve Champion ribbons in the ‘cookies’ category and the ‘from scratch cakes’ category.  She took Rainbow Cookies   and a Rainbow Sherbert Angel Food Cake, and she was asked to come back for “Best of Theme” for her cookies

Sawyer's Ribbons

 

 

 

 

This was Sawyer’s third year in the senior division and he to took a Reserve Champion ribbon in the ‘candies’ categories for his almond rocca toffee.  He also received a blue ribbon for his spaghetti sauce in the ‘main dish’ category, the guy who won this competition had elk steak skillet!  Yum!

 

 

 This is always such a fun event for the kids as they learn to sharpen their cooking skills and learn about things such as presentation of the food and how to loose gracefully and how you maybe should not chew gum and blow bubbles while talking to the judge!

Erin

Egg Count:

 

 

Saturday: 1 egg

Sunday: 1 egg