This Week on the Farm: August 30, 2014

This summer has been a good one on the farm. We haven't had any animal casualties lately (except ones that we ourselves decided on and inflicted), everyone looks fat and happy from all the nice green forage that the pasture is providing, and our ducks have begun to lay eggs! With the addition of thirty-four ducklings to the crew, our current count of outdoor animals is up to fifty-three and that will soon grow as we're expecting to begin breeding the rabbits in the next month or two once the weather cools down.

Tiberius, our Katahdin ram, has been ornery as usual lately but he's gotten easier to manage using a squirt bottle full of vinegar. I spray him indiscriminately in the eyeballs when he gets anywhere near me so he's better about leaving me alone when I'm in the pasture caring for the chickens and rabbits. This weekend we experienced his first real aggression -- he often will lean his head against Josh's leg as a challenge, but he's never tried to butt us. We were out caring for the ducklings this morning when a giant horsefly landed on Tiberius' flank and when Josh went to shoo it off the fly must have bitten Tiberius because he wheeled around and charged towards Josh. We got out of the ram's way quickly, but felt kind of sorry for him since he clearly got his feelings hurt thinking Josh had been the one to pinch him!

Wendell is growing and thriving and I'm 24 weeks along! This pregnancy has been a challenge, as I've had to slow down the pace of life and let Josh help out with many farm and household tasks I'm usually in charge of. It's been great practice in learning to stop rushing, to be present in the moment, to put down my to-do list and focus on where I am today and what I can enjoy this very minute.

Today is processing day for some of the chickens we got as chicks back in the spring. We bought the chicks unsexed (it's hard to tell sex of a tiny little chick) and out of seven we've got at least three roosters -- there may be a couple more left, but we're not positive about those so they get a temporary reprieve. I've enjoyed seeing the roo chicks grow up - these ones asserted their malehood pretty early in adolescence - big bulky thighs and legs and an unmistakable testosterone-driven strut and way of carrying themselves. Unfortunately for them, we've got no use for roosters with our small flock and if we kept them they'd be nothing more than pets, animals that we have to pay to feed but that don't give us anything in return. So into the stewpot they go! They will make some delicious chicken and dumplings.

The horde of ducklings! This is twenty-nine of them, I think. All Mallards (the brown ones) and Muscovies (the black/white/mottled ones). They fit well in the big hoop coop (best $50 we've ever spent on the farm! We've had it for 2.5 years and it's still going strong) and I think will continue to, since we will process ducks in batches depending on who grows out the fastest, so the group will slowly get culled down to just the few Muscovies we will keep for breeding.

The garden has become the hot weedy mess that I expected it to be by the end of summer, but I feel very satisfied with my garden work this year. We've produced about 150 pounds of delicious, fresh, organic veggies and things are still growing! The tomatoes are still producing a little, a second sowing of green beans and bush lima beans are kicking in, and I've got a small spot planted with some fall crops: kale, salad greens, three different kinds of turnips (I realized this year how much I love them!), radishes, carrots, kohlrabi, sweet peas. 

I love these gorgeous Christmas lima beans. I've never grown limas and I didn't grow up eating them, but these were too beautiful to not grow. I'm excited to serve them tonight alongside cheddar scalloped potatoes, grilled lamb chops, and fresh green beans from the garden. It's lovely when we get to enjoy a dinner full of foods grown right here on this tiny piece of land that we love so much.

Cherry Tomato Crostata with Fresh Goat Cheese

The tomatoes, oh! The tomatoes!

They've been coming out of our ears, truly. With today's harvest, which may be one of the last since my plants are petering out, we hit the fifty-pound mark! I've been keeping track all season of how much we've grown and to know that fifty pounds of tomatoes came right out of our front yard garden is very gratifying. All that hard work paid off!  That harvest weight doesn't even include the many tomatoes we lost (mostly the heirloom varieties, which I won't likely grow again) to splitting, cat-facing, and worm holes -- but even those yucky tomatoes found a use as chicken feed! The chickens think tomatoes of any kind are the best treat ever. Even moldy, wormy, sludgy ones.

Josh and Maggie aren't fans of fresh tomatoes, but I've been eating them atop salads and sandwiches and cooking them in as many ways as I can. I refuse to do any tomato canning, as I've found that freezing them whole is a much simpler and much less time-consuming way of preservation. But we haven't even had that many tomatoes to freeze, what with a glut of amazing recipes that use tomatoes in one form or another. Here's some of them that we've tried and loved:

Fresh pizza sauce (of course I used fresh tomatoes vs canned)
Pimento BLTs (adapted to use Hannah's pimento cheese recipe that uses a box grater vs food processor)
Tomato and fresh corn quiche

Tonight we tried out a new recipe, small tomato crostata with fresh goat cheese.  Goodness, this crostata! I found it via the blog The Yellow House, through an e-book with different recipes for using up summer's bounty of tomatoes. Amazing. Simple and easy, even for me, a novice at pastry making. I used some of our red cherry tomatoes from the garden and fresh chèvre from our local artisinal and highly-lauded goat cheese makers, Belle Chèvre.

 Served with pesto salmon and a green salad, it was a simple meal with little prep work -- I made the pastry a couple days ago and was happy to read that it can even be frozen then thawed. Straightforward, easy, delicious, healthy. My favorite kind of dinner. All three of us polished our plates! Though I'll be honest, Maggie picked the tomatoes off and then had to eat them plain afterwards. Josh and I enjoyed ours much more atop the crostata where they belonged.

Though we're coming to the end of the tomatoes from our own garden, I've got about ten pounds ripening on my kitchen countertop and waiting to be experimented with before the fall veggies begin to roll in (soon we'll be harvesting spaghetti squash and pumpkins!). 

I've been aching to make this fresh tomato sourdough bread ever since I stumbled upon the recipe. During my nauseous first trimester, Josh was being sweet and cleaned out the fridge (a lot of things were going bad, since I could barely eat and couldn't stand the smell of food so Josh couldn't cook either, and I definitely couldn't clean out a fridge full of stinky old foods) and let me know that he had cleaned out a particularly foul-smelling Mason jar full of gloop... which ended up being my healthy sourdough starter, that had been doing just fine until it was poured down the drain. At any rate, I've now got a brand new starter bubbling on the countertop and as soon as I get enough I will be making that tomato bread. 

What tomato recipes have y'all tried and loved? Any suggestions?

This Week on the Farm: July 4

It's been a lovely week. I'm enjoying the "honeymoon" second trimester and the weather has been surprisingly temperate. Lots of time to get out into the garden and to spend time with our animals.

The thornless blackberry canes that I planted last year are going crazy! We've only got maybe twenty berries, but the canes are multiplying and sorely in need of a trellis system. I'm excited for next year, when this plant will produce lots more blackberries and when we can finally let our blueberry bushes grow some berries.

Oh, these ducks! They're four months old now and much less of a pain to clean up after now that we just let them free-range in the pasture. There's some risk that a predator might get them at night, but everything has been fine so far. Although they're not nearly as filthy as they were when they were in a contained space, they do manage to dirty up the water containers very quickly, as you can see here. 

The middle fella in this picture is definitely a male; he doesn't look that much different from the other two but is beginning to get some iridescent green feathers on his head, which identifies him as a drake.

Spottle is my favorite of our two older ewes. We developed a special bond during the short time that I milked her. She's just got a sweet, gentle disposition and is a great mama.

Little Sassy. She's Spottle's ewe lamb, almost seven months old now and as sweet as can be. She is looking more and more like her mama as she grows. She's not nearly as skittish as her unnamed twin brother, who wants nothing to do with us (which is smart on his part, since he's our freezer lamb!).

Tiberius and Sassy. Tiberius is a naughty, naughty boy (I don't risk going in the pasture with him anymore unless he's tied up or put in the pen), but I just think he's gorgeous and his nose wrinkles are adorable. I hope he passes down his red coloring to the lambs he sires.

Since Tastebud lost her winter coat she's been looking so pretty and clean. Well, as clean as a white sheep can be when it wallows in the red dirt all day. I love her pink nose.

Our chicks are growing up! We've got seven total and I think at least three of those are roosters. Hard to know for sure until the roo's start crowing. The ones here are Buff Orpingtons (the yellow ones), Easter Eggers (the red ones), and Speckled Sussex (the white and black ones).

The bush beans have quit producing already, but the pole beans are just getting started. These are yard-long beans, which really do get a yard long. I've been experimenting with cooking them; they're not as crisp as regular green beans so they do better with being sautéed than with being steamed. I may try roasting them in the oven and cooking them in a curry.

We've got plenty of green tomatoes on all eight tomato plants, but these first ones to ripen have been full of worms. I'm not too worried, since we've got several grape and cherry tomato plants and worms tend to leave those alone, plus our chickens are thrilled to get the wormy tomatoes that we don't want.

This Week on the Farm: June 27, 2014

We've had quite an emotional week here at Haven Homestead. We celebrated Josh's birthday (31!), slaughtered our favorite hen, dealt with a ram who is becoming increasingly aggressive, and had a series of unfortunate events after moving six baby rabbits to a new pen, including two escapes of babies into the neighbors yard and one eye injury. We've tried to take it all in stride - the difficult parts of farming come right alongside the enjoyable parts. Our animals are a lot of fun, but a lot of work and sometimes a lot of heartache.

We've been spending a lot of family time outdoors these days. It's buggy and hot but we wear long sleeves and pants to fend off the mosquitos and are mostly at peace with all the sweating that happens along the way. Around 7:00 Josh usually goes off to tend the animals and I go off to tend the garden, with Maggie bouncing back and forth between us assisting in sundry tasks (turning the water hose on and off, picking beans, pulling weeds, feeding rabbits) and hunting down insects to study.

Maggie will tell just about anyone that she's a "nature scientist" and she loves our outdoor time when she can explore our tiny piece of land. She's getting into garden work as well, particularly getting excited over our harvests. In the spring we volunteered some with a local food organization and Maggie learned to make kale chips. Ever since, she's been making them almost completely on her own from our garden-fresh kale.

Our sheep have been enjoying the weeding we've done this week in the back garden, which is up against the pasture fence. All kinds of weeds are getting thrown to them and they seem to especially love these huge thick tall ones. Tiberius the ram is especially enthusiastic about weeds, yanking them out of our hands when they are offered.

I love our outdoor cats Harriet and Charlemagne -- they're a lot of fun to have around and not much work. I often glance out one of the kitchen windows to see one staring at me, perched either on the car or on the porch railing. They spend a lot of time sunbathing stretched out on the back porch, but with all that laziness still manage to be hunting machines. Almost every other day we find a vole, or a field mouse, or a baby garter snake, or a lizard, or a bird lying dead in the driveway in front of the car, a disgusting token of feline affection.

This Week on the Farm: June 14, 2014

Summer is almost here! Wild blackberries are growing profusely and everything everywhere is green and growing so quickly. All the animals have been spending large parts of the day stretched out in the shade, trying to stay cool.

This week we had to begin tying up our ram Tiberius before going into the pasture to care for all the animals in there. He's just been getting too feisty and mean, beginning to challenge us by lowering his head and pushing into our legs or simply refusing to back up when we're trying to walk near him. Rams can be dangerous animals and we knew from the start that we couldn't make a pet of Tiberius. He's a big boy of at least 200 pounds and full of testosterone and a desire to keep his ladies safe. At any rate, tying him up keeps us safe and him from being sent to the freezer for becoming too dangerous towards us. He definitely doesn't like it though and using the one halter we have that's bright purple probably doesn't help his dignity.

We've gotten so much rain in the last week that our pasture was practically a swamp. It began stinking to high heavens and all the animals were coated with mud. Thankfully we've had a few dry days and I've been able to get back into the garden to tackle some of the weeds that sprang up during all the rain.

Tonight I made the first big harvest of the year: a giant bunch of kale that I blended up to be frozen into ice cubes for smoothie making, a couple handfuls of green & yellow beans, a gorgeous Autumn Beauty sunflower that sprouted from last year's scattered seeds, a small bowlful of Yukon Gold potatoes, and three big ol' zucchini that are a cute round variety. 

We've also got a crazy amount of eggs sitting on our counter. Really, something like 6 dozen. It is out of control. Since getting pregnant I've had so many food aversions and have been unable to cook without getting nauseous, so the eggs have been piling up as the hens diligently laid 3-5 per day as usual. We ended up listing the hens on Craigslist and all but one sold. It was sad to see them go but all of them went to homes in folks' backyard where they'll be well-loved. The 2 month old chicks we've got will begin laying towards the end of my pregnancy and my fingers are crossed that I can cook by then!