So Good Chelsea Buns (For a Frosty Day)

These Chelsea buns are a great treat for a cold morning. We've been feasting on these the last couple of days, but they only last so long! Note: the dough turns out best with the use of a stand mixer.

DOUGH:
In the bowl of your mixer, add all ingredients and with the bread hook, mix for a total of 10 minutes. Dough will be stiff!

6 1/4 c. flour
2 tbsp. yeast
2 c. warm water
1/4 c. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1/3 c. oil

Let dough rise until double.

Cut dough in half. With each half, roll out flat in a 12"x18" rectangle. Spread generously with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. Roll up tightly on the 18" side. Slice into 8 pieces, about 2" wide. In two greased loaf pans, sprinkle on the bottom of each:
 1/8c. brown sugar
Arrange 8 pieces of the dough in each loaf pan.

Let rise until double in size again, about 40 minutes. Bake at 400oF for 15 minutes or until evenly brown.
Immediately after they are finished baking, flip buns upside down onto parchment paper over a wire rack. Let the melted brown sugar glaze the buns.

Enjoy warm or reheat before serving.

  

Rabbit Update: False Pregnancy!!

Just last week I ran into a dilemma with Marigold. Although she hasn't been with Burgess, she was showing all signs of pregnancy. Most noticeably, she was pulling her hair and making a really comfortable looking nest. Good thing for Google, I was able to diagnose her with a FALSE pregnancy. More and more like a soap opera, I was the one responsible for it all. I make a habit of occasionally taking the rabbits out of their cages for a little walk, and while I had Burgess out, I showed him to Marigold (from the outside of the cage) and said "Look Marigold - this is your husband!" After doing some reading about the rabbits reproductive system, I discovered rabbits ovulate on command, and although Marigold wasn't bred - just seeing the male cause her to ovulate. Her system responded by preparing for babies and that's why she was pulling her hair and building a nest. But just to be absolutely sure, I checked her nest box a couple times to make sure there weren't any extra surprises...

**Note: Hair pulling can be indicative of other health issues. If your rabbit is pulling their hair, do some research to make sure you know what's going on.

Oh Rats!

My months-long struggle with trying to kill a rat has finally ended. It all started when I was out late doing chores, and a rat had come in the chicken door and found a nice snack in the feed trough. I screamed, the rat took off and the chickens were all freaking out. Needless to say, the chicken door didn't stay open past 5pm after that. My next encounter with the rat was when I discovered that he chewed my 3/4 bushel of potatoes to shreds that I was keeping in the garden shed. I mean, they were ruined. Feces everywhere! So out went the potatoes. I didn't see him again for a while except for tracks here and there. But then, yesterday morning I was doing chores innocently enough and out of the poop tray of Marigolds cage came the rat, looking sneaky and guilty as you'll get! Poor Marigold was scared silly up on top of her box. So rat-killing got a bit more serious. I bravely set the rat trap, put it in a well travelled area, bated it with some broken Christmas cookies and left. Later I went to do my evening chores, completely forgetting about the rat trap. I went into the garden shed for feed and BAM! I had caught my much avenged rat! He was large, and no longer in-charge. Im glad I caught him but I certainly don't have the stomach to go near a dead rat! It took all the gumption I had to shovel him up and turf him on the manure pile! Gross! Hopefully I got him before he had a chance to make a family...

Rabbit Update

A big project we took on this fall was building new rabbit cages for the winter. I knew I couldn't leave them outside, so that left the garage or the garden shed. Since everything is already out at the garden shed, that's where we elected to put them. We did some rearranging and measuring and started on our cages. We did 2 cages at 4'x2'x2' that stack onto of each other. We made the back and the two sides from 1/4" plywood. and the front is 1x1 cage wire. The bottom of the cage is 1/2"x1" cage wire  and beneath that is a drawer where the rabbits poop and pee all falls through. One of the plywood sides opens entirely as a door. We built 2'x1'x1' fully enclosed plywood "nest" boxes, with a door for extra shelter on colder days. Im really glad we built them with the drawers beneath, it makes for such easy cleaning. Just slide the drawer out, empty it and replace the bedding. Both the rabbits are healthy and growing. Their temperaments are so nice. Burgess has to have a good head massage every day. Marigold is a really nice rabbit, but she's so curious. She tosses her water dish around, she still spills her food and she loves to chew whatever she possibly can, particularly my mitts. My only big beef is running back to thaw the rabbits waters. It means checking and replenishing their water about 3 times daily. But for such nice critters Im glad to do it :)

  

The Great Chicken Adventure: Settling In for Winter

Even though it feels like I've had my chickens forever, this is really just my first year with them, and I've never even had chickens over winter yet! So far this is what Ive done to prepare them for winter. I cleaned their coop pretty thoroughly. I scraped up all the old bedding and replaced it with fresh stuff. A mix of pine shavings and straw. Now that the birds are older I find they spend most of their time pooping off the roosts, so its really packed at the back of the coop and in the rest of the area its fairly clean. We locked up the little door and nailed a board over the inside to keep out drafts. Ive closed the air vents, except on warmer days I open them for a bit of air circulation. I stopped letting them outside after the days were in the minuses, day and night. The days are much shorter and I find that the birds go to roost around 4:30 or 5pm. Ive been collected from 3 - 10 eggs per day, usually in the lower numbers though. The Buff Orpintons lay a light to medium beige coloured egg but the dual purpose birds lay the most beautiful big dark brown eggs. The only downfall is that they usually lay their eggs on the floor, and not in the nest boxes. I get one huge egg that's even bigger than a turkey egg. If I had a scale Id weigh it. And sure enough that egg is always a double yolk!
Here you can see its size compared to a regular sized egg:

Today when I was doing my chores I watched my birds for a while - they do the strangest things. I bet an animal psychologist would get such a kick out of my flock, because I sure do! If I haven't mentioned this before, Rob is certainly the king. Everyone listens to him. Fluffy and Garden Boy - the other roosters, are subordinate and they obey him. So today I watched Rob do what Im assuming was an election, or a loyalty call of sorts. He went to a corner and faced the wall, and then he didn't make any noise. But all the hens and all the roosters snugged right into that corner with him. They were all crowding to get as close into that corner as they could. There wasnt any food over there, there wasn't anything to scare them to that corner. Ive never seen anything like that before, and Im glad I had my camera.

 
 

FarmSmarts Blog Relaunch

Even though I never went anywhere, Im finally back! The harvest kept going - in more ways than one. Just last week I was canning STILL! I do believe that things have finally calmed down to a reasonable pace (which I never thought would happen). I don't even know where to start. The month of October was kind of a "turning of the page" for me. I made the tough decision to sell Holly the cow. Fortunately my farmer friends where I boarded her wanted to keep her, so that was an easy transition. Sometimes its hard for reality to work its way into your dreams, but once it does you can feel sure of your decisions, and I feel that way about Holly. I certainly haven't given up on someday having a Jersey milking cow, but now is not that time, and it wont be that time for quite a while yet. There was no way I could bring her home to our non-barnyard 1 acre, and I got an extra shift at work, and it was just getting harder and harder to keep up when I was running for chores (as much as I absolutely loved it!). So that was that. Now the critter count is 25 laying hens (seven are the dual purpose layers who have integrated just fine into the coop), 3 handsome roosters - Rob, Fluffy and the Garden Boy. So yes, I didn't have the heart to kill my favorites... And we have 2 rabbits, Burgess and Marigold, and that's it. The typical day for me now is just feeding and watering chickens, topping up their limestone chips (for calcium), collecting about 5 eggs, feeding and watering the rabbits, and changing the bedding in their cages. Pretty much only half an hour of chores per day, helping me to finally focus on housework and keeping a regular schedule of sorts. The garden wrapped up really nice. The "pantry" is full of beautiful jars of canned produce. The pressure cooker served me well - I wouldn't possibly have been able to freeze everything. We would have needed ANOTHER deep freeze!! I dehydrated a lot of produce as well - shredded carrots, berries, apples, onions, tomatoes, herbs... Ive been busy baking off squashes one day per week, they don't seem to be keeping as well as I would like. And I had to put a rush order on canning carrots because they weren't keeping either. Needless to say, Im out of jars and Id say I blew my budget on jars this year too... Maybe Ill have to start a free jar collection campaign next year. But with the end of canning in sight, and being on the brink of Christmas, I can start looking ahead to knitting and sewing projects. I also have several rabbit hides that Im going to tan this winter. Just this week I got my seed catalogue in the mail and since it arrived Ive been having a hard time getting anything done other that dreaming about what Ill plant next year. And believe me - next year Ive got big ideas. Im going to focus on raising things that do well for canning and selling. Now that I know what we need for one year in terms of canning, I can start looking towards selling excess. Plus I want to try growing a cash crop of pumpkins and squashes next year. Ive saved a lot of seed this year, and providing that it germinates, I could put in a lot a cucurbitas! We expanded the potato garden triple the size it was, and was that ever a job to do. I didn't figure it was worth digging by hand again, since time was an extra precious commodity this fall. So we ended up pulling a hand plow with the diesel 3/4 ton and actually had to flip at least half the sod by hand since the truck had to back up over everything that it flipped. Lesson to self: avoid planning a garden where there's very little space for the right equipment to do the job... So the last two months can be summed up by "all work and no play" - but its a good thing we enjoy the work we do!    

More Critters - Burgess the Breeder Rabbit (to be)

Last week I went and bought another rabbit, before I've even gotten around to butchering the first batch. BUT this rabbit is going to be my breeder rabbit so that next year I can have a whack load of rabbits! I named him Burgess and his wife (the white Californian) has finally been named Marigold. Burgess is really scared and skittish, but he's slowly coming around. He's only about 2 months old. He's got the most beautiful colouring, he is a New Zealand Red. Apparently the new Zealand and californian cross makes a great meat rabbit - so that's what Im hoping for come spring (obviously Burgess has a bit of growing up to do before he becomes a parent haha).

The Garden Wind-Down

After all the hard work of planting, weeding, and waiting, the harvest came in a rush, and now after a heavy early frost, the garden is completely levelled and ready to be prepared for another year. Fortunately I got the main things off before the frost, tomatoes and my last zucchini. I figured the roots would be ok in the ground, so I left them (aside from my potatoes which I harvested). I left the cabbage, the vines and the beans. My beans were turned completely to slime, and some of my squash and pumpkins even took a hit, with freeze marks on the top side. I didn't get my apples picked in time, but they don't look to have suffered any. I picked them just after the frost, in case we get another frost - I wont risk it. Overall, production was good (considering the limited amount of time I put in) and we have a good store of food in for the winter. Now all I can think about is garden expansion plans...

 One and only eggplant

 Spartan Apples

 Harvested 1 bushel of potatoes off the new garden (see post on double digging!)

 My seed zucchini

 Kidney beans drying

 The frost damaged garden

 Again - more frost damage

 My bountiful squash harvest

The Great Chicken Adventure: Week 23

Wow I'm delinquent at keeping a blog!! I promise I didn't check out of chicken care the way I checked out of blogging this past month. Everything has been crazy busy between the harvest, some butchering and "extra curricular activities". As sad as I am to see things winding down, Im glad in a way. Its been such a busy and consuming first year of farming. But I am starting to see the fruit of all my hard work. Week 23 in the chicken coop brings a slightly reduced flock. We started with 33 chickens, butchered Bernie, the first troublemaker-dictator, then we butchered his "sister" who was actually a male, then we did a big lot of 5 miscellaneous roosters, bringing the chicken total to 26 birds. We didn't have a scale to weigh the end results but taking a guess they were each around 4 pounds of well fed rooster. Now its so quiet to go into the coop, theres practically no fighting, and theres no bloodspots (from stress) in the eggs anymore, yay!! We still will have another 4 or 5 to butcher, whenever we get time. We had to kill off Racing Stripe the most beautiful rooster, because he was fighting with everyone! If another rooster even looked at him, there would be an all-out-feather-flying fight. Rob is the new king of the coop and the little garden helper is still alive too. The hens are laying eggs quite faithfully, everyday there are about 3-5 for me to collect. And I haven't been in need of eggs yet. Two hens have made a habit of laying on the floor, but fortunately they haven't made the habit of eating their eggs (yet)... Occasionally I let all the chickens come outside on the grass and theyre just in their glory when I do that. They make the funniest excited noises! And eat grass like its going out of style! The chickens still get a fair bit of garden and veggie scraps. They went pretty wild over the pumpkin skin I gave them. Theyre on 100% laying mash (even the males) and they get an additional scoop of oats (when I remember to give it to them). Im going to start them on oyster shells this week at some point, that will help the hens with building their shells.
Below are some picture of the birds during the last month.

The Great Chicken Adventure: Week 19

Surprise! Surprise! After expectantly checking nest boxes every day for the last several weeks, I am SO happy to finally have collected my first eggs! Only two hens must be laying, because Ive gotten one egg per day plus two days Ive collected two. They are pullet eggs, meaning that they are smaller than the egg of a fully mature hen. I think its the dark brown hens that are laying, since that's who Ive caught sitting in the nest box. She lays her egg in the afternoon, as I haven't collected it before two in the afternoon. So now that some are laying, Im switching their feed to the laying mash, as soon as my scratch feed is done. Im very happy that they are laying in the nest boxes - sometimes birds wont use the boxes, and if the eggs are on the floor theyre more likely to pick up the habit of eating their eggs. Recently the roosters have been fighting more - the longer I put off butchering, the harder it is to decide who will have to go. They'll be well fed when their time rolls around though!

Produce Overload: Canning Applesauce

I made the mistake of not spraying my mellow apple-producing Melba tree this year, and the apples are unnecessarily wormy. The whole apple isn't wrecked, you just have to cut out the worm trails. So Monday I picked up a 5 gal. pail of windfalls, then again on Wednesday, then again on Friday and then again today! So Ive been chopping (with the wonderful help of my Ma) and making applesauce! Im onto 8 litres and 12 pints - and not slowing down.

Heres what I do:

Quarter your apples, leaving skins and cores on  
Put in a large pot and fill with water until about 2 inches from the top of the apples
Cook the apples until they are completely soft
Pour the apples and their juice through a food mill
Put applesauce into sterilized jars
Process jars in pressure cooker for 5 minutes at 5 pounds of pressure (see "Produce Overload: Canning Beans" for more pressure cooker instructions).

And enjoy - all winter long, without taking up all your freezer space!

*Don't worry, I didn't forget the step "add sugar" - because you don't. You can put your sugar on when its in your bowl!*

Produce Overload: Canning Beans

Sometimes smells tie you back to a memory - and the smell of canning beans reminds me of Grandmas kitchen in the summer. She taught me how to can beans, and after the way my plants are producing this year - Im glad Ive got something worthwhile to do with them all! After I finished tonights batch my grand total is 45L of canned beans! (My secret goal is to have a jar per week - 52). I don't think my bean plants will let me down either, theyre non-stop! If you buy from Veseys be sure to order Provider green beans and Gold Rush yellow beans, their names give them away. So first step to canning beans, don't waste your time with a boiling water bath - go buy a pressure cooker (I got my heavy duty second hand brute at an auction, for less than half the price of a new one, and its worth its weight in gold). Second step, pick your beans, snip them to inch lengths and wash them twice in cold water. Sterilize as many jars as you have beans (4 c beans per litre jar).
So my process for the pressure cooker is to get the water boiling in the pressure cooker, with the lid askew. I heat 7 litres of water to boiling in another pot. At the same time as I stick my jars in the oven to sterilize, I get my snap lids heating in some water too. Then when everything is boiling, I get my jars out, pack them, leaving an inch at the top of each jar. Put one tsp. of coarse salt in each jar. Fill the jar with boiling water and put the lid and ring on. Don't crank the ring on, just until it pulls firm when you twist it on. Then place them on your rack in your pressure cooker, get the lid on and fastened. Make sure you have your petcock open to vent the steam. When steam is pouring out, shut the petcock, let the pressure rise to 10 pounds and then hold it there for 25 minutes. Make sure to let the pressure decrease to 0 before opening the petcock. When no steam comes out, open up the pressure cooker, take your jars out and let them cool on a rack. And for goodness sakes, use oven mitts, those jars come out stinkin hot!
If you haven't used a pressure cooker before, watch a youtube video or something first, and don't walk away from it while the heat is on. And they usually come with manuals - which are good to read too.
Ive never had a jar of beans not seal for me before - when done in the pressure cooker. The flavor is far better too than frozen or store canned (blah!).

Produce Overload: Bread and Butter Pickles

Bread and butter pickles have to be one of my favorites! Now that the cucumbers are ripening (almost too fast to keep up with) - its time to do up some pickles. Here is the recipe I use, try it and enjoy. Im sure you wont be disappointed!


Bread & Butter Pickles

Scrub 30 medium size cucumbers and slice into thin rings.
Slice 3 medium sized onions in thin rings.
Soak the vegetables in ice cold salt water for 3 hours.
Drain.
Combine:
5 c. vinegar
5 c. sugar
2 tbsp. mustard seed
1 tsp. turmeric
1 tsp. whole cloves
Bring to a boil.

Add vegetables and return to boiling point - but don't boil.
Pack into sterilized jars and seal.

Leave them on your shelf for at least a week before enjoying. They keep a good two years.

The Great Chicken Adventure: Week 17

Another couple of weeks have quickly gone by. The chickens are as full grown as they'll get I suppose. I was looking though my blog posts the other day - starting at week one, and its incredible to look back at how much the chickens have grown. Theyre on 100% chicken scratch now - which is a five grain mix. I haven't gotten any eggs yet, but maybe they'll start around the 5 month mark (3 more weeks to go?). Their diet has been heavily supplemented with fruit and veggie scraps from the garden - mainly apples and zuchinis right now. I cleaned the chicken coop out yesterday, and replaced the old bedding with fresh bedding, I just used a mix of pine shavings and hay. The old bedding was incredibly dry - so unlike cleaning a cows stall! All the chickens went nuts exploring their clean house. Now I shouldnt have to clean the coop again until late fall. Ever since we butchered Bernie, Racing Strip has stepped into the place of dictator. He does a good job too - bossing everyone and scaring the living daylights out of my poor hens. He's next to go. Im torn though, he's developing such beautiful colours its a shame to kill him. Now that his tail feathers are green, he's growing in BLUE wing feathers!! What type of chicken is he?! Well even if he ends up in the freezer - Ill save his feathers. Maybe Ill make a collage with them... Well here's some pictures!

 Chicken version of "The Wall" by Johnny Cash

The Cream Separator

Over a year ago now, I bought an old DeLeval Junior cream separator at an auction. At the time I didn't have access to cows, fresh milk or a farm - but now I do and that's why Ive finally had the opportunity to try out the machine! The separator was kept in wonderful shape throughout its life and wasn't rusty. I gave it a thorough washing before taking it up to the farm. There was a fair bit of assembling required, but fortunately the separator instruction manual came with the machine! That alone is an antique Im sure, but I appreciated it. We milked fast, excited to try out the separator! We had about 10L whole milk to put through. We got the handle turning, because its a bit stiff, then we poured the milk in, opened the release and let er' fly! Before you knew it there was a beautiful yellow stream of cream coming out the top and a bright white stream of milk coming out the bottom. It took about 3 minutes for it to process the 10L, which I would say is fast! Then we had 8L skim milk (which is probably still richer than anything you'd buy at the store) and 2L of rich rich cream. All the parts of the separator had to be disassembled and washed ,including the discs. I only used water, not soap (don't want your hard earned cream tasting like soap!). The next couple of days were filled with dairy experiments - including: skim milk yogurt, butter, crème brulee, the list goes on. We eat well with the cream separator at our disposal!

Produce Overload: Dehydrating Blueberries

You can only do so much with blueberries in terms of preserving. Ive done as much blueberry jam as I like, Ive frozen over 30L and that left me with one other unexplored method - to dehydrate them! Im fortunate to have a dehydrator, but I haven't had the opportunity to use it much. I read online that they take a long time to dry (and a takes a lot of berried if you want something as an end result)! So I spread the berries on the trays (with the "roll-up" tray at the bottom - to catch the ones that slip through), I stacked the trays and set the dehydrator to 115oF. Then I left it about 2 days. I checked it periodically, taking out the berries that were completely hardened. It seemed that the berry skin held moisture in, which took that much longer for them to dry. When they were all hard, I put them into glass jars to enjoy this winter.  Im hoping that they keep well and won't mould. It would be a shame to lose any. They turn out sweet and chewy - and make a wonderful snack. Almost beats candy!

Produce Overload: Raspberry Jam (Pectin Free!)

Well the raspberries yielded more than you can imagine, I think Ive figured it to about 1L berries per foot of plants - giving me about 75L of raspberries! And that's a low guess. Ive told about 15 people to come pick my berries for free, yet everyday I still find myself having to pick my patch. Ive given away a lot, Ive froze as many as my freezer is willing to accommodate and Ive made jam, and I will continue to make jam now as long as the berries hold out. Ive tried a couple variations of the recipe below, using raspberries and blueberries at different ratios (since the wild blueberries are even more plentiful than the raspberries!). The raspberries seem to be high in natural pectin and that's why you don't need to use powdered pectin. (Pectin is the gelling agent by the way). So heres my favorite popular recipe!

Raspberry Jam

Clean 8c. of raspberries
In a large pot, mash the berries and boil them for 15 minutes.
Add 6c. sugar and return to a full rolling boil.

Meanwhile, sterilize your jars and rings (either with boiling water or in the oven at 215oF for 10 minutes).
Also heat your snap lids.

When your jam has got to that really hard boil, where you cant stir it down and its spitting all over your clean kitchen floor, pour the jam into your jars, seal and ring them and let them cool. Youll hear the enjoyable "pop!" "pop!" of the jars sealing (or else you didn't so it right). The next day check that the jars are sealed by bouncing a spoon on the jar lids - if it makes a hollow sound its sealed, if the sounds spongy it hasn't sealed, so refrigerate it and use it first.

Ive found that this jam keeps well for 1-2 years, longer than that - I don't know, because its long gone before it gets the chance!

Back to Dairying: Butter the Easy Way

Why make things complicated? If the hydro was out, how would you make butter? Simple answer - shake!! shake!! I discovered last week that you don't need a kitchen aid mixer, a food processer or an old fashioned butter churn to make butter. I cut my butter making time in half by using the two hands that Im well equipped with, a mason jar and a 1/2 L of cream. Simple recipe: put your cream in the jar, put on the lid and the ring, shake the life out of it for 10 minutes and you will find a lovely lump of butter in your jar! Scoop out the butter (make sure the butter particles are well compacted, if you aren't sure, shake longer), rinse it under cold water, squeezing it gently to get all the whey out, salt it down and enjoy! Youll yield about a 1/4c. butter and about a cup of buttermilk (so don't throw the leftover liquid out by any means)!

 Butter lump formed

 Salting it down

 Enjoying!!

The Great Chicken Adventure: Week 15

The flock is down one chicken - to 32 birds. But don't worry, the skunk didn't get it, the chopping block did. The much famed Bernie is now happily residing in our deep freeze. He was fighting really bad with the others, he had ripped a piece of another roosters comb right off, and it was bleeding badly. So I said enough of that, I caged him up without food or water (in order for the bowels to be empty at butchering time). The next night we did him in. A chicken doesn't take long to butcher, probably 1/2hr of work then it has to chill for a couple of hours. We were lucky that he didn't have any pin feathers, it was easy plucking. Someday Ill make a post on butchering chickens, but Im by no means an expert. Ive done them before which helped it go quicker. I guess I was emotionally detached from the situation since Bernie was fighting with the others and he really needed to go. Ive got the others almost off their grower feed, Id rather have them just on scratch when we butcher. They still have a 25% grower diet until the feed is gone, which should be this week. They have been enjoying all the garden scraps I give them. Usually a good scoop of grass and the scraps from whatever produce Im processing in the day. Berry culls, bean ends, etc. I can probably expect to start getting eggs from the hens in about a month, which is incredibly exciting for me! I haven't been playing with the chickens much, but the day Bernie had taken a piece out of the other roosters head, I took that poor victim to the garden with me and he was the best companion. He sat under the shade of the beans for a good 15 minutes, then he came right close to me and helped me with the weeding. He would take little snips off the pigweeds. He came when I called him and he didn't leave the garden at all. Maybe he'll be the one I keep to service the flock, he's so nice. But I suppose Rob was nice too - not anymore. Yesterday I caught him with a mouth full of feathers - I guess he'll be the next to go..

 Chicken in the garden

 Racing stripe taking flight

 The nest boxes

Losses

Life of a homesteader/farmer/gardener - whatever you may be, is not accurate without some losses. Unfortunately some are hit worse than others. My turn came around last week. I was doing my morning chores, and when I got to the Banty house, I found my poor little May and June massacred in the worst way. A skunk had been hanging around the place for the last couple weeks, and that was the varmint that did the dastardly deed. He had dug under the cage, took what he wanted and left. So I buried my little chickens, feeling horribly responsible for their death. Some improvements were made around the place after the loss, the rabbit cages were given a bottom, and lifted off the ground. And now I carry them grass instead of them being able to graze. But better that way than to have dead rabbits too. Also I close both chicken doors at night now, so it stays a bit stuffy but nothing could get inside. Its a sad loss, but it could have been a lot worse. I heard about a lady that had 25 pheasants ready for slaughter the next day, and that night a fox got in and killed every last one of them! I will leave a live trap set for the rest of the summer, hoping for no more preventable losses around here.

"Farmer, Farmer, Soil Charmer - How does your garden grow?"

With the perfect balance of rain and sun, the omission of natural disaster, the application of well rotted manure and faithfulness to picking weeds and bugs - the garden does indeed grow!

Its exciting to taste the "first fruits" of the garden. To see the reward of planting and waiting. After my cucumber beetle epidemic, I try to keep a close eye on the vine-type plants. Every once in a while I have to squish the odd straggler (that didn't get the memo to stay out of my garden)! But overall I couldn't be more pleased with how well the garden is doing. The plants are bushy and vibrantly green. Everything seems to be blooming early, and fruit is already setting on my cukes, zukes, melons and squash. Ive harvested kale, lettuce, spinach and radishes. I even snuck a carrot that was about 3 inches long, and Ive enjoyed having to thin the beet greens. My peas are heavy laden and ready to be picked this week. Beans and tomatoes are blossoming. Outside of the garden the raspberries are doing exceptional! So far Ive picked about 12 L off the patch and they still have LOTS to ripen. Before ya know it, Ill be into canning beans, corn and tomatoes! Until then, youll find me weeding...

 

The Great Chicken Adventure: Week 13

There hasn't be much to report on the chickens over the last couple weeks. They continue to grow steadily and their feathers are filling out in a most beautiful way. They have been wonderful little composting machines for me - I take them treats very often. They enjoy weeds from the garden, bread crusts, cull berries and fruit and veggie ends. They also thoroughly enjoy burnt cookies (at least someone can enjoy them)! I've started switching them off their grower feed and right now theyre eating a diet of 50% scratch grain and 50% grower. I wanted to do this so that any medication from the grower feed will be (hopefully) out of their system at butchering time and when the hens start laying eggs. I started them onto the scratch grain at 25% the first week, now 50% the second week and next week they will have 75%, until the grower feed is gone. The nest boxes are finally in the hen house, but nobody has so much as tried going inside the boxes. Perhaps when they start laying they will make use of the boxes. They do however, enjoy sitting ontop of the next boxes, and 6 have ditched the roosting poles at night and choose to roost ontop on the next boxes. As the garden work increases, I haven't been socializing the birds as much. They are still friendly, but they only swarm me now if Im bringing them treats, not if Im whistling a song to them, haha.

<--Racing stripe and his coat of many colours.

Produce Overload: Canning Strawberries

For my quest to have freezer space left at butchering time, I am trying to dry and can as much produce as possible. Im much more partial to raspberry and blueberry jams, as opposed to strawberry jam, but I like to have some strawberries on hand over winter. So this year, I made canned strawberries for the first time.
I started by washing and topping 11 litres of strawberries (you can do however many you like, this is just what I had).

Now the ratio for canning strawberries is 1/4c. sugar to each cup of berries.

Mix the sugar in with the berries and let sit for several hours. The sugar and berry juice will make a sauce. Try to stir the berries every hour or so.

I opted to use my pressure cooker for the project. So while my water was heating in the pressure cooker (lid NOT on), I washed my jars and sterilized them in the oven at 215oF. I left the jars in until I was ready to fill them. I had my lids heating in hot water as well.

When the pressure cooker's water was hot, I started filling my jars with the berries (the berries and sugar are not cooked). Make sure to leave a 1/2" air space at the top of the jars. Put lids and rings on jars. Place on rack in pressure cooker. Put lid on pressure cooker, according to manufacturers instructions and with the petcock open, wait for steam to blow thickly from the petcock. Then, shut the petcock, and wait for the pressure to rise to 5 lb (will show on gage). When pressure is reached, set timer for 5 minutes. When time is up, turn off heat and wait for pressure to decrease to zero. When no steam hisses from the petcock, open lid and remove jars from cooker. Cool on wire rack. After jars are cool, check that they have sealed. Tap a spoon on the jar lid, if it sounds spongy, instead of having a clear ring, it hasn't sealed. Refrigerate unsealed jars immediately and use first. Sealed jars should be kept in a cool dark place.

When your craving some strawberries in the winter, instead of buying those abominable red water berries from the store, pop out a jar of flavour filled "just-like-fresh-picked" strawberries and enjoy!