Planting notes for garden box 1

Since I've had C.R.S. (Can't Remember Sh ...Squat) since Iraq, I thought to make notes.  My wall calendar is a little short on space, as it has notes on setting eggs in the incubator and trying to breed bunnies, so here is as good a spot as any to make notes.

• Garden box #1 (the first we set up) was re-weeded three days ago while the moon was in the air sign Gemini (which is good for fruit trees, but not much else I cultivate).  I discovered one of the digging forks' handle is totally toast, as if it had absolutely no treatment for the wood at all.  This was the one we bought new in '13 or '14.  The digging fork I picked up at the flea market of unknown age is still in good working order.  Go figure.
• Since the moon phase is waning (and we hit the 3rd quarter officially tomorrow) this is a good time to plant below-ground crops.  I selected daikon radish, carrots, and beets, with intent to pickle most of the harvest.
• Burpee brand daikon long radish, ordered from website so nothing fancy on the packaging.  Marked 300 seeds, packed for 2017 (except goats happened last year), origin Italy (I so love what Italians have done with any vegetable that catches their fancy!), lot 20.  Three rows, as it's a main focus for this box.
• Burpee brand carrot, Burpee A#1 Hybrid (I think I have Queen Anne's Lace growing out in the uncultivated areas around us, which is basically wild carrot and will cross with domestic carrots).  Again, a nothing-fancy package from the website.  Marked 1500 seeds (that ought to keep me busy this season), packed for '17, origin USA, lot 14.
• Burpee brand beets, heirloom Cylindra variety.  These are supposed to grow as fat cylinders for easy slicing.  Nothing-fancy pack from website, was in the lost-for-a-month package with my Roma tomatoes the other year.  Three rows.  Marked 1000 seeds, packed for '17, origin Italy, lot 14.  I must have planted some a year and half ago, but don't recall if they sprouted or not.

I have this set up as radish-carrot-beet-carrot-radish etc, so the beets and radishes are separated by the carrots.  Beets and radishes aren't antagonistic to each other, but according to the companion planting chart I like, they are neutral about each other but both love being by carrots.

Hubby cheered when he came outside and saw me finishing up planting and watering.  He says he is very much looking forward to homegrown garden-fresh produce again, now that the worst of the troublemaker goats are contained in a hard pen.

Still to do today: test the garlic to see if any still have life in them.  I read in a blog discussion a while back ago that garlic doesn't keep well more than 2 seasons.  I am also going to check some beet seeds from '13 and '14.  Call it a little science fair project.

Unplanned lamb

My friend Lynn called me around 0900 this morning.  I had just fixed my second mug of coffee, and was carrying it to the desk with the intent of calling her to say Brooke kindled and I have a couple more baby bunnies (Gracie kindled yesterday).

Lynn wasn't calling about rabbits, or chickens, or plants ... one of her lambs got her head caught in the gate somehow, panicked, and severely injured herself.  Lynn wanted to know if I wanted to take her and slaughter her, so the carcass wouldn't go to waste.  I said sure, and got my shoes on and hit the road.

When I got up there and saw the lamb, my heart sank a bit.  This one was their favorite, and a couple days after lambing, Lynn's husband was proudly showing me pics of her on his smartphone.  She even had a name, and they don't usually name their animals.  One look and I could see her neck was indeed severely injured, either dislocated or broken.  Lynn moved the poor little lamb to my front seat, and I took her back home.  She lay quietly for almost the entire trip, but the bumps of the dirt roads must have been painful as she started to flop around and off the seat.  I pulled her back onto the seat, and tried to calm her until we got home.

She got a quick death - I hit the artery on the first cut.  After that, it was almost exactly like skinning and dressing out a goat kid. (Oh, we put two of our boys into the freezer.  Kid tastes like a cross of veal and lamb.)  Two hours after I got her home, she was slaughtered, skinned, dressed, sectioned, and put on ice.  When I called Lynn back to let her know everything went smoothly, I had to reassure her that the poor thing could not be saved.  She could not stand or move properly, and she lost consciousness quickly, and probably never felt the cut from the filet knife (Rada brand, good quality knives).  Lynn thanked me for taking care of this ... the gate incident happened right before they were opening up for business.

Life and death, all in one morning.

Bunny update

No pics, as it is a grey and blah day here.  It's just not as wet as was forecast so far - we'd actually like a little more rain for the new fruit trees.  Along with putting up a post to let family and friends know we are still very much above water, there have been some significant bunny changes here.

The first is in the addition column of "rabbit math."  Five new rabbits - yes, five - have been added: four just weaned and about six weeks old (born April 27th) and cute as baby bunnies can be, and one adult that I have been hoping to buy for months.  I bought all four baby bunnies because the lady said she isn't good at sexing them at such a young age, and neither am I.  I stopped by Lynn's on the way home with them to have her look, since she used to raise rabbits by the hundreds (literally).  She looked, and said I have two and two, so Saturday I took the runt male up to the farm swap to try and sell him as a pet, since not only is he flashily marked, but has the perfect balanced temperament for a pet - not too adventurous but not too timid.  Animals just weren't selling this month, and I was not inclined to hang around at the auction to sell him there.  So, I'll feed him for a month and try again next time.

The adult addition to the rabbit row is a beautiful dark blue Rex furred female.  I had thought she was larger, but that was probably because when I first saw her at the auction she was in a very small cage.  Lisa had named her Shalimar, and I'll likely keep that name.  Lisa told me Shalimar is shy and submissive, and needs a week or three of sniffing noses through the wire before I try to put her in with Jack the gigolo bunny.  Oh yeah, part of the payment for the baby bunnies was bringing Jack out to spend some time with the babies' mother.  Tabitha is really hoping this results in a litter, and I of course am curious to see how Jack's first kits turn out.

Now, for the subtraction column of the rabbit ledger - Beau is fulfilling his destiny, and weighs in at 3 pounds, 2 ounces of meat and bone.  I salted his skin with canning & pickling salt, then left it out for a few hours to somewhat dry (as best as can be expected in our humidity) then folded it salt-side-in and put it into a freezer bag in the freezer to wait until I have a couple more.  We're looking at various rabbit recipes.  Lynn came down yesterday morning to demonstrate proper slaughter and dressing-out of a rabbit, so now I know how to snap a rabbit's neck quickly and with as little stress as possible.

So, to summarize: still alive, still above water, and still weird.

Whole lot of busy

Today is one of those days I realize just how many different things I have going on here.  I've been working with Chocolate on the milking idea, and as long as she has Goat Chow in the feeder, she could not care less.  The instant she's done inhaling her Chow though, she tries to get away.  Hubby has been holding her for my to milk, except this morning he is up in Jacksonville because his brother just got back from a rotation to Korea.  I tried to get Lynn out here to hold her, but business is picking up fast at the commercial nursery she owns/runs so no dice there.  As a result, I only got about two ounces this morning, whereas I got over six ounces yesterday morning, and the difference is someone holding her.  A milking stand is en route here from Pennsylvania, but FedEx tracking says it won't be here until Wednesday.

Also in transit are: a meat grinder, patty mold, and bell hog scraper to get the hair off the pigs' skins after slaughter; hoof trimmers, hoof knife, goat halter, and a lamb/kid bottle in case I need that for my next goat; and two cheese making kits plus another cheese making book so next year when I have three in milk, I will be able to make cheese from the excess.  One Nigerian Dwarf doe can give up to a quart a day even with kids on her, depending on how good a milking bloodline she's from.  That is enough for hubby and me, but Cocoa will grow up, as will the registered doeling I am on the hunt for, so for a couple years I will be having three kidding and milking, so cheese making has been on my to-learn list for a couple years.

The guineas are finally acting like proper guineas: they are flying or hopping out of the enclosure and moving off in a gaggle to hunt for bugs.  May they find every tick nest not just on our property, but the neighboring properties as well!  I find it amusing they just started doing this the day after Craig, Marty, and me were discussing how to cook guinea.

On the chicken front, more hens are getting into the spring mood and starting to camp out on eggs or golf balls ... including one of the Big Butt Girls, the black phase BLR Wyandottes I got from Luanne.  Luanne has now had a grand total of two Wyandotte hens go broody on her over the years (one last year, just to prove her wrong when she told me they don't go broody) so having one out of only three in the back of the tractor all fluffed up and growling was a surprise.  Kids and critters will make a liar out of you every time.  Having another Silkie go broody wasn't much of a surprise, but having it be one of the black dragons still tending Silkie chicks was.  Let the daily battle over marked versus unmarked eggs begin.

Hammy and Pork Chop continue to grow and eat like pigs should.  I have decided not to keep either one, and instead go hunting for a pair or trio of full blooded Pot Belly pigs for my pork project.  Hammy will go first, as he is the smaller one and not putting on fat to the extent Pork Chop is.  Pork Chop has the fat jowls and wrinkles around the shoulders that Potbellies are known for, so I am curious to see just how big and fat he'll get.  I even had to buy the second bag of pig food for those two last week, making my total investment still less than $35 for pigs plus feed.

I was going to including planting notes and greenhouse update, but wow this has gotten quite long with only part of the critter update.  Oh, no pics this morning, as I set my camera down somewhere and don't recall where.

Bigfoot and a baked Silkie

I caught Bigfoot just a short bit ago, then held him until hubby reached a break point on the Silkiebator tractor he's working on to take a few pictures.

Bigfoot, the one grow-out cockerel from the October hatch

Bigfoot isn't sure if he liked his throat stroked
He certainly has lovely hackle feathers!

Bigfoot staring down the camera
(I am holding him by his hocks)

Bigfoot's wingspan - he still has a lot of growing to do!

Bigfoot still has big feet and long legs to grow into ... and a nice wide wingspan.  He flapped a bit while I was posing him, and left his one wing spread out, so all I did was extend the other.  I am still quite pleased with how he's growing out - especially considering he's from my first F1 hatch.  He seems to be setting the standard pretty high.

Quick note on the January hatch - the best cockerel has a single comb, so I will not be growing any intact cockerels from that hatch.  That gives me more caponizing practice.

Finally, we ate our first Silkie cockerel recently.  I had a couple of oranges from my friend Lynn's trees, and an idea to make a nice exotic spiced baked chicken using orange juice, ground cinnamon, ground clove, and just a touch of cayenne.  Exotic-looking chicken, exotic spices for it.  I am so doing a Silkie for Halloween, with green food coloring in the rice and acorn squash.

orange spice baked Silkie

The Silkie cockerel was quite small, which is why he ended up on our table.  The amusing part is, when he had his feathers he looked about the same size as BeeCee.  It was when I picked them both up the size difference was apparent.   Plucked, cleaned, and without giblets the Silkie only weighed one pound, ten ounces.

We also ate one of the guineas, cut up and done teriyaki with fresh mushrooms, carrots, and garlic.  Not bad, a touch richer in flavor than even the Silkie, but the guinea only weighed one pound, fourteen ounces under all those feathers.

I had also slaughtered a cockerel from Bigfoot's batch, and he weighed two pounds, 15 ounces (just shy of 3 lbs!) which is quite a decent size for the age ... especially considering that slip from last year only weighed about four pounds even.  He was the smallest slip, and I should have just slaughtered him instead of trying to grow him out more.  Ah well.

Planting notes 31 Jan

Went outside and did up a bunch of seed planting.  In the eastern-most box, I planted (pre-soaked) beet seeds (Ferry-Morse "Ruby Queen" from 2013).  In the new box over the old compost heap, I planted "Purple Top White Globe" turnip seeds (Ferry-Morse recently bought, 2016).  In the original garden box, closest to the front door and starting to fall apart, I planted carrot seeds (Burpee "Scarlet Nantes" from spring 2013).  In the original salad box by the mimosa stump, I planted parsnip seeds (Ferry-Morse/Lilly Miller "Hollow Crown" from 2013) and white radish (Ferry-Morse/Lilly Miller "White Icicle, short top" from 2013).  If the old seeds come up, then they come up ... if not, I will plant something else.  I emptied those seed packets, sowing more thickly than recommended because I probably won't get a decent sprout rate from seeds that old.

I've been working hubby pretty hard, bringing home more compost purchased from Lynn's nursery as we made new planting beds.  Yesterday he emptied the truck bed in the morning, and I had it filled up again in the afternoon on my way back from Palatka.  I had asked if he'd feel overwhelmed or upset if I got more so soon, and his answer was, "Not if you bring me some beer to recharge after all this work."  So, I found the new variety pack from Samuel Adams and he announced the first new flavor he tried last night after emptying the pickup bed again to be tasty.  The homesteade runs on coffee, beer, and chocolate.

I still have a six-pack of "Bright Lights" Swiss chard to transplant, and then I need to move some sprouting trays out to the big walk-in greenhouse so they get more sun.  Then I want to start some "Red Burgandy" onions in one of the new trays.

Planting again and great auction results

According to my "planting by the signs" resources, today is another good day to condemn ... er, plant more seeds, so I put in 18 seeds for Pak Choi, 18 seeds for "Top Seven" turnip greens, and 36 seeds for Anaheim peppers, which if successfully grow make great seasoning for hubby's chili and go well with pasilla peppers to make enchilada sauce.  This tray is marked with a packet of yellow mustard on the left, and placed on top of the back refrigerator.

Pak choi cabbage, top seven turnip greens, and anaheim peppers

Now, for the results of last evening's livestock auction, where I took in Silkie Boy and six laying hens: Beetle, Blackie, Greyscale, Funky, Little Girl, and one of the Pretties whose comb leader goes straight back instead of curving to follow the skull line.  Apparently, this is THE time of year to sell layers!  Holy cow ... ok, no cows went through the auction but a bunch of potbelly pigs went so cheap I was sorely tempted.  Blackie, Beetle, and Greyscale went for $19 each.  Funky and Little Girl went for $21 each ... and the Pretty went for $23.  Silkie Boy only brought $5, but the girls more than made up for him.  Greyscale even laid an egg before the auction started.  I think I have now broke even on the auction idea, overall.

I did not bring home any new critters, but I did snag two dozen duck eggs to try out ... lovely huge yolks that fry up nice and dippy.  Hubby likes, plus if Muscovy ducks really do taste like grass fed beef, I see a duck pond and ugly ducks in our future.

I also brought home some new plants: two lemongrass and two Japanese Maple hibiscus, which are edible as well as cool looking.  They can also be used for tea, and is the exotic flavoring on our favorite meade, Viking Blood.  I think if there is a plant I could love, it may just be hibiscus.  Pics when it warms back up, as the new plants are in the greenhouse up against the south wall of the house.  Someone has let one of y'all's cold fronts wander too far south today!  It was ten degrees warmer before the sun came up.

Pepper seeds planted

Here's a link to the video as well.

Hubby grabbed his digicam instead of hunting down a notebook and pen, so here are some planting notes:

• Home Farmer "Classic hot" jalapeno peppers for hubby's scrambled eggs.  I still cannot eat jalapenos at all.
• Ferry-Morse "Latin Flavors" pasilla bajo peppers ... fully ripened and dried, these make the BEST barbecue sauces.  They rock in enchilada sauce as well.
• Ferry-Morse Cubanelle sweet peppers.  Note on back says great for frying, which I interpret as fajita peppers.  I'll be experimenting on the pick green versus ripened to red difference.
• American Seed Marconi Red Italian sweet pepper.  I'll need to see how it stacks up to the Carmen sweet pepper from the other year, which I have not been able to find in seed or start since 2013 spring.  I may still  have some seeds from then, but last year when I tried planting some I failed.
• Burpee Tangerine Dream sweet pepper.  Short blurb on back says great fresh or pickled, so I think it may be comparable to banana peppers.
• Ferry-Morse Grand Bell pepper, mixed colors.  Everyone needs some bell peppers, especially now we have the recipe for sweet-and-sour from the 1968 Betty Crocker book.

I had a very pleasant birthday yesterday, and hubby took me up to Leo's for lunch, then we pillaged Wal-Mart to score seed starting trays and some more seeds, plus peeked in on TSC (needed a new bag of bunny chow) and Home Depot but neither has the spring gardening section set up yet.

Chicks are now hatching in rapid succession in the incubator, starting at zero-dark-thirty this morning.

Chicken soup and hot tea

Today is day two of hubby doing the hot tea and chicken soup "diet" plan.  The sinus crud hit him pretty hard yesterday morning, and he actually requested the chicken soup.  He had "meh"ed the idea the evening before, as the only time chicken soup sounds good to him  is when he's sick.  So yesterday morning I opened up a pint jar of chicken stock, popped it into a little pot with carrots, garlic, crushed red pepper, and spaetzle from the grocery, and dried Swiss chard and kale for his breakfast.  I figured he'd nibble on that all day ... instead he had that pot done before brunch time and was hungry for corned beef hash and omelette.  After brunch, I made him another pot using a pint of chicken meat from last January that had plenty of "juice" for broth, and a can of store-bought vegetable broth.  Since the chicken was far more chunky, I omitted the noodles.

Hubby says even though he doesn't care for chicken soup unless he's sick, when he is sick the chicken soup I make is the absolute best.  It's even better using birds we raised up ourselves, and canned up here.  The other day, while the man was unloading the lumber delivery, he chatted about chickens since we had a group out in the enclosure.  I found myself once again grasping for a way to describe the flavor of an older chicken, as compared to the little 5 or 8 week old fatty babies at the grocery.  While I still can't really say what it tastes like (other than CHICKEN!  LOL) I have made the comparison to the difference in flavor between veal and beef.  People seem to be able to wrap their minds around that analogy, although that still doesn't tell them what the wonderful flavor of an older bird is.

Hubby expressed a concern this morning about using up the chicken stock in the pantry, but I assured him we are not at that crucial of a level just yet.  If we do run too low for comfort, then I'll just harvest the October hatch cockerels earlier than planned.

Condemning seeds, aka planting

Yesterday, I decided to condemn some more seeds to being buried (hopefully!) alive.  I planted some beets and parsnips in the garden box where the chard used to be, until we buried it with a bed-load of compost from Lynn.  We cannot keep up on making enough compost here on property, so until I decide we have enough planting beds, we'll just supplement via Lynn's nursery.  She even has a couple Bobcats to turn the stuff easily (and load it into the truck).

Funny thing: I saw movement out the corner of my eye while planting, so looked up and there were ten of the twelve guineas, having hopped the perimeter and strolling over to see if I was doing anything interesting.  I was quick to brush dirt over the seeds, so my rows probably won't look very straight when they come up.

I have another bucket load of compost in the back of the pickup again today, and we are also waiting on lumber delivery this afternoon.  I had hubby make me a list, and went into town yesterday to pay and arrange delivery.  With 30 2x4s plus some 3/8" plywood and a couple 1x6s, he should have plenty of wood to build me broody/nesting bases for most of the tractors, plus a rabbit cabinet to get the bunnies' cage up off the two pieces of scrap 2x4 it is currently sitting on.  He used up the last 2x12s to make the current box awaiting fill dirt, which I think I may just fill up with carrot seeds.

Since my gardening attempts have had only limited success so far, I have decided this year I will plant by the signs ... yes, of the zodiac.  The feed mill up in Lake Butler was handing out calendars that have that info on them, along with sunrise/set times, moon rise/set times, phases of the moon, and notes for which days are favorable for not only planting, but working with livestock, including specific days to set eggs.  If conventional methods aren't working as well as desired by themselves, then it time to augment with a little magick.

I cut down one broccoli plant that had not given us even a little sprig yet, and cut it into three parts for bunny treats.

Final note: hubby ordered a computer thingy to fix my picture issue, so I ought to be able to do pics again by next week.

Pictures from 2015

the "Star Trek" killer aloe in bloom

Tiny, from early spring

another pic of Tiny, from spring

smoked salmon and a sweet potato on the grill

Feyd and the Big Butt Girls

coop repair, all hardware cloth

coop repair, from the side

roof replacement on the banty house

detail of the nest box roof replacement

a smoked cull cockerel

young smoked cull cockerel in the big crock pot

hubby's pink nosed monster, Little Bit

cat on the windowsill

George the bunny

Brother, Feyd's crossbreed son

Brother's nice broad breasts (5 months at slaughter)

George on the grass

George the black otter colored looks-like a Mini Rex

stuffed slip at ten months

Bigfott, the one grow out cockerel from October hatch

Pollux the nanny capon

closeup of Bigfoot

Pollux's shiny tail feathers

Pollux the chick nanny

Thanksgiving capon dinner

First, the "empty stomach warning" ... that is, do not look if you have an empty stomach.  Go snack before reading on!

We had Uno the capon as our Thanksgiving dinner, and yes indeed, he was tasty.  For those who may not recall, here is Uno out on the grass:

Uno the hatchery GLW capon

Note that his comb and wattles are small and still chick-pink ... that is how you can tell a capon from a slip.  When the hormones come back on a slip, they redden up and grow their comb and wattles again.  Even without his hormones, Uno still kept almost all of his tail feathers and held his own among the six slips.  I do recall him being a little pill as a cockerel, and unlike Pollux, Uno showed absolutely no aptitude for nannying chicks.  The one time we tried, all the chicks were huddled in the far corner of the tractor while Uno was eating all the food.

Uno plucked and dressed out beautifully.  My postal scale only goes up to five pounds, so I don't have a weight for him, but he was well-fleshed and had a generous amount of rich golden-yellow fat on him.  Here he is on the smoker:

capon on the smoker

Doesn't he look just positively scrumptious?   Hubby only gave him a light smoking - one hour - just enough for flavor.  Then, into the largest crock pot:

capon in the crock pot

For some reason, I thought I posted a pic of one of the cull cockerels in that same crock pot, but apparently not.  Uno was ten months old, and the next-oldest cockerel we've eaten was only six months old, so there is a definite difference in size and cooking time.  When I served dinner, he was cooked through, but not to tender stage yet.  Next time, I'll just set up the crock pot on low to go overnight, or maybe just "warm" which is one setting below low.

For those curious, dinner was rounded out with baked sweet potatoes, broccoli casserole (frozen from grocery store broccoli, as our plants out in the garden aren't ready yet), cranberry sauce, and homemade dinner rolls.  Dessert was baked pumpkin cheesecake, and was served a couple hours before dinner to give the rolls enough rising time.  It's a good thing we ate dessert first - no one had room for anything else after the dinner!  That was my first baked cheesecake, and I probably should have gotten a pic, but it is just too late for that now.

Cull cockerel harvest

OK, I was able to keep to my self-imposed work schedule for this first stretch of cooler weather, and slaughtered the eight remaining cull cockerels through the week, plus Uno the full capon this morning for Thanksgiving Day dinner.  Of the eight cockerels, two are big and meaty enough to roast whole, Brother, Feyd's larger cross-breed son and one of the Ameracauna cockerels from Luanne.  So, six went into jars: seven quarts of stock (two with a bunch of carcass meat for casseroles) and eight pints of meat.  I'll get pictures later on, as I am waiting for the quarts of stock to cool enough to open the pressure canner and check how many sealed.

The pints of meat canned up SO beautifully!  All I added to them was 1/4 teaspoon of canning salt, and each one ended up with rich golden liquid from the meat - canned in its "natural juices" as the grocery store label would read.

As I hoped, Brother had his sire's big meaty breasts.  He also had nicely fleshed leg quarters, and he'll be frozen whole along with the largest of the Ameracauna cockerels.  Meanwhile, Uno came out not only meaty, but with large deposits of rich golden-yellow fat, not only under his skin but in the abdominal cavity.  I tried to save as much of that as I could, and hubby held open a quart sized zip bag while admiring it as I put it in.  I am trying to decide if I want to render it first, or use it "raw" for making pot pie crust.  I'll need to get a new scale to weigh Uno's whole carcass - he is certainly more than five pounds (the limit on my postal scale).  I'd also like to get weights on Brother and the Am cockerel.  Especially Brother, since he was only five months old.

I am definitely looking forward with eager anticipation to next year's capon batch, from my Wyandotte sires: Feyd, Azar, Tiny, and even Spikey (over whatever remaining red broiler pullets and Feyd's daughters).  This morning's slaughter of my first full capon made all the efforts and slips worth it.

Full speed ahead, as I work towards the goal of consistently producing twelve pound capons!

Homegrown chicken dinner

I think we have hit the magical sweet spot on cooking up cull cockerels!  We had one of Luanne's cull Wyandotte cockerels last night for dinner, and the taste was simply awesome.  First, we slaughtered five Wyandotte cockerels Sunday morning to make room for the new Silkies I had bought Saturday night at the local livestock auction.  The carcasses rested in the back refrigerator for five days, then hubby mostly plucked one Thursday while I drove to an appointment, then he brined it (standard issue 1 cup salt to 8 cups water) until yesterday morning, when he put it into the offset smoker for a couple hours with cherry wood chunks for the smoke flavoring.  Then we moved it to the big crockpot and let it go on low for another three hours.  When hubby went to lift up the chicken after we decided it was done, both drumstick bones came right out and the meat was melt-in-your-mouth tender.

We just finished up the leftovers for lunch, and this was the fastest we have eaten an entire cockerel.  My friend Lynn had a leg quarter last night when she came by to get ten guineas.  I asked if she had supper yet, and when she said she hadn't I offered her some chicken.

"Home grown, too.   Wyandotte."

"Oh, now you're talkin'!"

Lynn agreed with hubby that the brine was a little too strong, so when I put it into the last three carcasses I added 2-3 cups more water.  Our plan is to smoke them, then cut them up for canning.  We'll see how many end up in jars, as opposed to the crock pot.  Maybe we'll get pictures this time.  Maybe.

Cappy's grand finale

This post is a tribute to Cappy the Gold Laced Wyandotte, hatched 20 January 2015.  For a cockerel who had absolutely no future in the breeding pen, he has had quite the good life!  I attempted to caponize him back in April ... in fact, I truly thought he was my first capon.  As a believed-capon, he was nanny to two batches of cockerels.  It was only last month that his hormones returned in full force, and it was obvious he was a slip.  So, Friday morning we slaughtered him.  We let his carcass rest in the back refrigerator, then brined him all day and night Sunday.  Hubby lit the smoker firebox yesterday afternoon while I seasoned: a light sprinkle of salt, black pepper, a very light sprinkle of cayenne pepper, then slices of a zested orange.

By 5:30 PM the smoking was rudely interrupted when the sky opened up into what Lynn described as "a monsoon" when she stopped by to pick up Maria's eggs to sell.  We put Cappy in the oven at 350F, but all we had last night were the wings, as the wonderful aroma was just about driving us crazy.  Great, most excellent flavor, but the meat had not cooked quite long enough.

Today I snapped a pic before covering Cappy up with some foil and putting him back into the oven, this time at 250F for a couple hours.

Cappy the capon slip,
smoked and seasoned and ready for the final roast

The breast meat was a tad dry, but that was probably because we didn't baste him.  Hubby thinks we should use the drippings for either a gravy or a sauce.  The flavor is fantastic!  We have more slips, so we can experiment to see if it's a matter of the smoking, the seasoning, the bird being older, or a combination of those things.  We'll also vary cooking factors like basting or wrapping in foil longer.

We are really hoping Uno is a full capon, because we both want to roast a fine capon for one of the winter holidays!

Meet Spikey the meat brick

First of all, these pics represent my usual lack of skillz with the digicam ... coupled with Spikey's natural tendency to turn away from the camera.  Perhaps I should have named him after my dad, given the shared aversion to cameras, but this might give an impression of just how solid this cockerel is.

Spikey the single comb Wyandotte

Spikey and a couple of the red broiler pullets

As the Wyandotte cockerels were growing out, I lamented the single comb on Spikey because he has such substantial beach ball shaped body.  He's at least half brother to Tiny and Azar, but while he's noticeably shorter than those two, he is also wider and rounder.  He'll make a nice Meaties sire, starting with the five red broiler pullets I kept (who lay quite well for a meat breed/cross too).  I decided that I'd like most of my Meaties that I breed to be single combed, as that will make it a little easier to tell at a glance in a few generations which birds are supposed to be Meaties and which are the official Wyandottes.

When I picked him up a few weeks back to move him in with the broiler pullets, I was happily impressed with how solid he feels.  Hubby thinks it amusing I described him as a little "meat brick," but he really does feel that solid.

Capons running around!

We've been learning to let the chickens out of their tractors. 

Sounds funny but we weren't sure what would happen.

Everything has been going just fine, they even put them selves "away" when they're done!

Thanks for looking!

Busy week

This has been a rather busy and fun-eventful week so far.  Kicking things off, we celebrated our ninth anniversary on Monday by going up to Jacksonville to have a Japanese hibachi lunch with the in-laws.  Before lunch, hubby and I both went "book mining" at a large new-and-used bookstore called "Chamblins Book Mine."  After lunch, hubby dropped me back at the Book Mine while he went off to WalMart with his parents ... there are days I just cannot stomach the noise and crowd at WalMart, and Monday was certainly one of them.  Since the Book Mine is so huge, that gave me the opportunity to look at the cookbook section.  I quickly realized I needed to be extremely picky and choosy, or I might need a semi-trailer to haul home my purchase!  LOL  The theme for cookbooks turned out to be baking.  While I didn't find a bread-specific book I liked, I did get one dedicated to 200 years of American baking, which yielded a new honey wheat bread recipe I made yesterday (more on that in a bit).

Tuesday, our actual anniversary date, was dedicated to the chickens.  Along with caponizing in the morning, my neighbor Maria came over and bought four of the red broilers.  Two were definitely "por comer" (to eat) and one was the lighter colored broiler pullet she had been telling me was too pretty to eat.  The other broiler pullet she decided was also too pretty to eat once she had the bird in her hands.  It amuses me when she tells me my meat birds are too pretty to eat, as I have decided I just don't really enjoy raising ugly birds (like the Cornish-Rocks).

I made cookies this week, using a recipe from that "all-bad-for-you" cookbook and they came out nicely.  I did glazed molasses cake cookies, and they really did turn out cake-like.  Today I will likely be trying out a cake recipe in my new cookbook, which conveniently has a picture of a Boston cream pie on the dust jacket cover.  All I needed to do was hold the book up and ask hubby if he'd like "this" instead of the usual pineapple upside-down cake for his birthday.

Yesterday, one of hubby's friends came down from Jacksonville to hang out, game, and of course enjoy the food here.  Hubby made breakfast of bacon, toast, and poached eggs.  By luck of the draw, hubby's friend got the double-yolk egg.  He thought that was so cool.  He also showed up with an empty egg carton, which I cheerfully filled while joking that, "Every good pusher knows to give the first hit for free."  He agreed, and bought a second dozen.  When he asked the price, I suggested $3 a dozen, which he promptly shot down saying our eggs are worth $5 a dozen up in Jax.  So, he put a five dollar bill on our coffee cart, and went home with two dozen eggs.  He said he'd like to come down once a month to get eggs and he hopes to try some of our homegrown chicken as well.

While hubby and his friend were gaming, I was bartering with the neighbor who raises grass-fed beef cattle for a couple of steaks for hubby to grill today, which is his birthday.  When I asked how much I owed him, he said we could settle that later in the afternoon, as I had mentioned making bread.  The recipe in the new cookbook is for two loaves at a time, and my neighbor says he and his wife LOVE homemade bread, and he returned the half-pint jar that held strawberry syrup (saying it was very good) and I mentioned being up to our armpits in eggs with only nine layers so far (and twenty more due to start laying in the next six weeks).  So, I ended up with two New York strip steaks in exchange for a loaf of honey wheat bread, another half-pint of strawberry syrup, and a dozen eggs.  Oh, and a couple cookies.  He had asked if the cookies were fattening, to which I replied, "Of course!  Non-fattening cookies are as worthless as non-alcoholic beer or decaffeinated coffee."

Now, to start up on the birthday cake, and also start cleaning up to make room for a spare bed because my son is coming down to visit on Monday.

Chard leaves as spinach substitute

Despite my best efforts, using seeds and even transplants, I am not doing well at growing spinach down here.  While I still have starts that are alive, they aren't thriving to the extent we'd like.  Enter the Swiss chard.  So far, we have tried fresh chard leaves chopped up in omelettes and now a baked crustless quiche, and that is working out just nicely.  I have also dried some chard leaves to add into casseroles and broth soups and eggs later in the year after the chard bolts.  I definitely want seeds from these plants!

We haven't yet tried torn up fresh chard leaves for salad, nor have I tried using the stalks like celery in broth stock, but I have read (somewhere ...?) that they can be used as such.  I'd also like to test out the dried chard in crackers as well, along with the dried kale I have.

Saturday afternoon I stopped up at Lynn's and picked up another bucket load of compost.  Yesterday hubby unloaded it into a nice long narrow bed.  I think I'll transplant tomato starts there once it gets into the shade in an hour or so.

While starting to crumble up the dehydrated chard leaves, I had a "doh!" moment, then went to get one of two glass mortar-and-pestle sets Mom gave me back when I wanted to major in pharmacy.  Of course, that was before I took the "GPA Killer's" organic chemistry ... but the glass mortars and pestles are still here, and still quite usable.  One is big, and one is quite small, and the small one worked just perfect on the dried chard and kale leaves.

I ran the little electric dehydrator the past couple days, and it did a great job of keeping the chill out of the air inside the house.  I also opened up the two extra trays, so it was running six trays on the lowest setting, "Flowers & Herbs."  I am planning to get a lot more use out of it this year, although it will be outside when it gets hot.

Salad days are here again

This year's designated salad box - planted from seed this time - is ready to contribute to the table!  Two kinds of lettuce and then a few baby small chard leaves as well.  The hens contributed the eggs hubby hard-boiled the other day.  What better way to kick it off than with a piece of prime rib hubby's dad sent home with him from New Year's get-together.  That's marinating in the back fridge, hopefully happily soaking up the port.  Fresh sliced mushrooms were marked down at the grocery Wednesday, and twice-baked potatoes will round out the dinner line-up.  It is also supposed to turn cold behind the last wave of rain, so this is the best time to roast some beast in the oven.

Here is the salad box, before pillaging.

this year's salad box: 2 kinds of lettuce planted,
1 volunteer green romaine, collards, and of course
volunteer acorn squash

I was intending to take a pic after the pillaging, but honestly I really didn't put that much of a dent in the leaves to be noticeable.

I intend to pretty much strip the kale plants, and the Swiss chard plants, tomorrow morning for dehydrating.  I want to get them before they bolt, and preferably on a morning it's cool.  Kale rocks when it's dried, then crumbled into scrambled eggs or a broth soup.  Oddly, the chickens don't seem to care for it ... they always tear through the turnip greens though.