Turkey noodle soup – oh, yeah!

On By stefrobrtsIn food2 Comments

Turkey Noodle Soup – part 2 – The stock simmered in the crock pot all night, and this morning I strained it, and added one onion, two carrots, two celery sticks, all diced, along with some thyme, salt & pepper, and garlic. Let that stew until lunchtime. Then I added noodles and white meat leftover from last night. Once those were cooked I thickened it with a little cornstarch, and served it for lunch with some no-knead dinner rolls. So good! I’ll be doing this every time I have a carcass leftover! That could NOT have been any EASIER! And what a way to squeeze every last little bit our of a turkey!

_
_

Making the most out of a turkey

On By stefrobrtsIn food2 Comments

Dave wanted turkey for dinner, and the only turkey breast they had at the store was a whole turkey breast – $15! Well, it’s ok, because I brought it home and de-boned it, and that left half to go in the freezer for another day. Then I took the carcass and put it on a roasting pan with carrots, celery, onion, and an extra leek that was past it’s prime, and popped them all in the oven to roast. I also roasted the breast half we were having for dinner. My favorite recipes are simple, and turkey breast is awesome when roasted simply with olive oil and salt & pepper. I put the breast half in my iron skillet, and roasted it for 45 minutes as well.

When the carcass was done cooking, it and the vegetables were nicely browned. I took them out and put them in the crockpot with enough water to cover, along with sage, and thyme. I’ll let that cook all night, and by morning I’ll be ready to make turkey soup for dinner tomorrow, and the extra I’ll freeze for quick lunches.

As for the dinner breast, it came out crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside. And my favorite trick is roasting in the skillet, because then I can rest the meat on a plate, and make gravy in the skillet with all the lovely brown bits left behind. So delicious! And we not only had dinner, but more than half the breast was still left for lunches or another dinner later this week. I’d say that turkey was $15 well spent!

_

Alpacas and fun with the new camera

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, navi, pets, photography2 Comments

Because I injured my eye last week I haven’t been in the mood to do much with the camera, but today I took it out to snap some pictures for a chicken update, and of the alpacas and dogs. I’m really happy with the camera so far. I just need to practice with it more.

 Navi
 Barclay, deciding if the neighbors need to be barked at.
Navi still gets way too much excitement out of barking at the alpacas when they are near the fence.
Seconds later, White left a noseprint on my lens!
Black is watching Jack on the other side of the fence, while behind him…
Red is munching on the sequoia!

Chicken update

On By stefrobrtsIn 2011chicks, chickens, navi2 Comments
 The 14 chickies are doing fine.That thing they are standing on is the shell of a cucumber they ate this morning.
Under Navi’s watchful eye! She loves to go in the room and watch them, but I don’t let her watch them unattended!
They’re getting big, and getting feathers on their wings already. Any idea how hard it is to hold a flapping chickie in one hand and take a picture with the other – it’s hard!
Out in the coop, one of my young hens went broody on me. I don’t know why my old hens don’t do that, but last year the only hen to go broody was my youngest one too! So I gave her ten eggs to sit on and moved her into the brooder box. She seems happy, but now I need to make a new brooder box for my indoor chicks to move into!
One of her lovely sisters 🙂
Some of my older girls. I feel bad for them, they have muddy backs and their feathers are all roughed up from the roosters jumping on them all the time. 
So I decided to give the girls a break and find a new home for my biggest rooster. He really is huge! I put him on CL and ten minutes later I had someone from not far away wanting to come pick him up this weekend. Perfect!
I’m keeping this guy. He’s awfully pretty, and I love his colors!
I think I’ll call him ‘Handsome’ 🙂
–

4H meeting at my house

On By stefrobrtsIn 4H, farm, llamas1 Comment

Martha and our guest speaker worked with the kids to help them address showing/handling issues with their llamas.

We had a 4H Llama meeting at our house today. I really enjoy hosting the meetings, because it’s fun to see everybody, and I don’t even have to leave the house! The dogs usually get to play with some kids, and it’s always exciting to see what happens. Today we had some unexpected excitement!

To start with, last night a couple families dropped off their animals early, and one of the families discovered their llama had inflamed feet – turned out they had foot rot going on because of all the mud on their farm. So I hung out with them and helped them get the llama treated until it was nearly dark, then kept her in our dry paddock all night.

This morning the 4H group started showing up, and we had a couple visiting experts, so they had a look at the foot rot problem and gave her advice on what to do. They got busy treating their llama’s feet, and the other llamas they had brought, and we got the other kids busy working on learning to show for fair. Our visiting experts helped them out one-on-one, which was great for the kids.

At the same time, a couple families had said that on the drive in they saw a very shaggy llama running down the street about a mile from our house. I pretty much know who lives where, and I thought I knew where that animal belonged. By the second time someone mentioned it, one of the families jumped in their truck (with horse trailer) and headed off to look for it. After a short chase they cornered it and caught it, wrestled it into the trailer, and brought it back to my place. I gave them a halter for it and they walked it out (noticing along the way that it was an intact male) and as soon as Martha, the other leader saw it – she recognized it as an animal she had given away a year or two before!

Turns out this animal which should have been gelded, had instead been passed around intact, never sheared apparently, and was now a big mess, and running loose! So I hopped in my van, along with the mom who had caught the beast, and we drove to where I thought the critter belonged. I got it right on the first try! She went up to the farm house, and the people said ‘yeah, he got out again’ – and they weren’t even out looking for him! So they took the llama back to it’s home, and the 4H mom told the people if they ever wanted to get rid of it to let her know. Instead of saying yes right there, while the animal was haltered and in the trailer, they waited a couple hours and then called and told her to come get it! jerks! So now folks are networking to figure out how to rescue this animal, get it the old snip-snip, and find a home for it.

After the 4H meeting was over I went along with two of the other families to the family’s farm with the foot rot problem, and we all worked until it was getting dark, treating all their animals and rearranging their barn to make a safe dry area for the llamas to recover in. Since this is the family that ended up with my llamas, I got to visit with Scoops and Patrone again, and Scoops was as sweet as he ever was – proving to me that it’s not me, these alpacas I am fostering really are just jerks! Heck, even Patrone was nicer to me than the foster alpacas!

So it turned out to be a very long day. I barely sat down between 10am and 7pm, helping haul straw, lift, pull, drag, dig, lead, and do anything else helpful I could (without getting kicked by a llama). Glad I could help out our friends, and I hope their animals recover quickly. I know this snuck up on them and they felt terrible about it, and I could have easily seen that happening to myself.

I stopped and picked up a pizza on the way home, and now I’m crashing on the couch – what a LONG day!  But you know, it made me feel good too, because my friends (like me) all have learned along the way, through trial and error sometimes, to take care of their animals, and help each other out, and if I decide to get a horse someday, I know they’ll be there to help me too.

_

Scratched my eye!

On By stefrobrtsIn health1 Comment

This is ridiculous! Things were going great,and then I woke up Thursday morning with a stabbing pain in my eye, so bad I couldn’t even convince the other eye to open up! We went to the urgent care clinic, and they put in drops to numb it, and then stained it and confirmed I had scratched it. They put on an eye patch, gave me antibiotic drops, and sent me on my way.

Friday the pain was back, and so bad I just couldn’t hardly stand it! I would just freeze up, fists clenched and shaking, it hurt so bad! Finally I called the urgent care back, and they told me to go to the ER or a regular eye doctor. So I called our eye doctor and he got me right in. He dialated it, stained it, looked at it with a camera on a computer, and showed me the big scratched area, overlapping my pupil. He said that made it particularly bad because if it scarred it would impact my vision. So he put stuff on it, gave me drops to use, and put a contact in my eye to act as a bandage and cover the damage so my eyelid wasn’t rubbing it all weekend. Then he told me to go home, hit the Ibuprofin hard, and rest and let my eye rest and heal. I’ll be seeing him again Monday.

My eye is still dilated, so everything is blurry on that side. It stings a little. I had to cancel taking pictures at a dog sports event this weekend 😦 and I’m stuck at the store while people pick through our last couple days open. Oh well. I was having an awesome week before this happened. Darn pillow!

_

Lost one!

On By stefrobrtsIn 2011chicks1 Comment

One of the chicks just wasn’t as active as the rest, and I had a feeling he wasn’t going to make it. Sometimes they have some internal problem where things just haven’t developed correctly. Sure enough, he passed away this afternoon. So I’m down to 14 chicks.

_

Chickies 2011!

On By stefrobrtsIn 2011chicks4 Comments

It’s chick season!

Today I picked up 15 little peepers from the feed store. Buff Orpingtons, my favorite 🙂 Since the weather is so cold, I decided to start the little guys in a rubbermaid tub in the house. Once they’ve got a good start I’ll move them out to the big brooder in the shed. As cold as it is, if the heat went out they would freeze – but inside they’ll be safe.

Cute little guys! The dogs are going nuts because they can hear the peeping, but they are in the packing room so the dogs can’t go in and bother them. The grate over the top protects them from curious cats.

_

Planning for horses

On By stefrobrtsIn Uncategorized3 Comments

I’m a long way from being able to afford a horse – maybe never at this rate! But I can still dream about it and plan how I might be able to make it work.

My main concern is our soggy pasture. There’s lots of good grazing for summer and fall, but it’s going to have to be protected through winter and much of the spring. So I’m thinking, how can I have a horse and keep them happy in a little square paddock all winter and spring? They’ll be bored stiff, and setting up a sacrifice area big enough for them to actually stretch their legs would eat up a lot of the pasture – and I want to protect as much as possible for summer. Plus I’ve heard about people spending tens of thousands of dollars trying to make a sacrifice area where the horses don’t have to stand in mud all day.

Then I read about Paddock Paradise – it’s a way of keeping horses where their paddock is actually a track that goes around the main field, protecting the grazing area, but giving the horses room to run a bit.

Here’s a lovely video of a lady calling her horses back to the shelter and making them go the long way around

CNY Paddock Paradise

And another one here in Western WA

Holly’s Paddock Paradise

The idea is to give your horse food in a couple areas (and putting the food in feeders that force them to eat slowly and work at it to help curb boredom), water in another, a scratching/rolling area, and have them spend their day going from one place to the other to get what they need, and get some exercise at the same time. Walking over different terrains is good for them too. I’m going to keep reading up on this idea (lord knows I have nothing but time to think about it), but I like it.

_

Down at the pond

On By stefrobrtsIn photography2 Comments

I took my new camera out to the local pond to take some pictures of the waterfowl. Unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate, and after only a few minutes the rain started coming down hard, and I had no choice but to hide my camera under my coat and run back to the car. I got a few pictures though.

The attention-getters today was this lovely pair of Canucks.

And there were a lot of lovely red-winged blackbirds, calling to their girlfriends. Spring is in the air!

They seemed to be everywhere!

I’ll go back on a nicer day and practice some more.

_