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Well, my newest crazy scheme involves pigs – potbelly pigs to be exact. I saw an ad on CL for a couple free pigs, and I figured, I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and there’s no time like the present, especially where FREE is concerned!
I love to see them like this because they have so much fun running and barking and digging. That’s the sort of life every dog should have!
I hit two home runs for dinner tonight! Irish Stew and No-Knead Dinner Rolls 🙂 The Irish Stew was a very simple crockpot recipe in my old Betty Crocker cookbook. I bought two pounds of local lamb stew meat last week, and I browned it (I used a little bacon fat to get it going, but after that it rendered quite a bit of fat out of the lamb). I browned it in the skillet, because my only dutch oven is a campfire oven, so it has legs, which makes it difficult to use on the stovetop. As I finished browing each batch I moved them to the dutch oven. While the next batch browned I chopped onions, carrots and potatoes and layered those on top of the meat. Repeat for three batches. Sprinkle some of my freshly dried thyme on top, deglaze the browning skillet with canned beef broth and pour all those lovely browned bits into the dutch oven, lid on, and parked it in a 300 degree oven for two hours. Then we turned it down to warm and left it for another three hours. At the very end I made a quick roux on the stovetop and stirred it in to thicken it up. Dave said it was a winner. The meat was just falling apart, and the veg was still in big chunks, but quite soft. Delicious!
The No-Knead Dinner Rolls was a recipe a friend recommended. It took about an hour and a half of rising time, but it was worth it. Delicious, fluffy rolls, a perfect companion to sop up the Irish Stew from the bottom of the bowl.
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This view from a different maps site shows a better angle for viewing the back yard/pasture area.
The blue lines are the property lines. The red outline on the left is the ‘front field’, and the bare square of dirt in that field is where I had a friend plow it with their tractor to try and have a garden, which didn’t work out because the ground was soft and rocky, the plants didn’t grow well, the weeds invaded, and I ended up abandoning that plan. However, I still think this area might make a nice winter pasture for a few small animals, like some goats or sheep. This picture was taken several years ago, and the trees in the front field are much bigger now.
The red outline on the right is what we call the backyard, or the back field. It’s a nice little pasture, and the goats were quite happy there for the winter a couple years ago, though it was hard to get food to them without having to tramp downhill through the slippery mud. The shed on the top right of that area is the hay shed, which is the backside of the chicken coop, and it was a nice shelter for the goats that one winter.
When I look at it like this it sure looks like a lot of space!
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Google has updated the satellite view of our house. For a long time it was frozen in time with the shop half-finished.
Now it is complete, and the little pasture shelter we built a couple years ago is visible. So is a chicken tractor in the side yard, and my yellow wheelbarrow just outside the back fence. My yellow mustang project car is in the driveway, though surprisingly enough the two ‘regular’ cars are not. The doors are open on the chicken house at the top of the picture. It must have been a hot day! Mid-summer, I’d guess, from the yellow grass in the yard and pasture.
As you can see, our property is mostly pasture. If only I could figure out how to make it earn it’s keep. I love my little wanna-be farm!
The door to the back bedroom has a kitty door cut into the bottom of it, and sometimes while we’re back there working Barclay likes to lay there with his head through the kitty door watching us.
Sometime Navi likes to get in on the act!
Good thing Barclay is so patient!
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I did come cleaning up in the garden today. The recent rains and cold snap have finished off the poor tomato plants. They really didn’t have a chance. What tried to ripen ended up just rotting on the vine. So today I started pulling them out and putting the vines in the compost pile.
So sad, all those tomatoes that could have been spaghetti sauce, or salsa…
With the tomatoes gone, the giant fennel plant looks lonely. I still haven’t decided what to do with it. I planted it on a whim. I’ve never used fennel before.
There are carrots growing in the raised bed. It’s the only place where the soil is soft enough for them to stretch down without getting all stunty.
The wax beans are done, and I collected some beans to plant next year from them. But the Blue Lake pole beans are crazy, and were tipping the trellis over!
I picked this huge bucket full of green beans! I’m going to pickle some, and freeze the rest.
UPDATE: Last night I pickled & canned 8 pints of green beans – four HOT, four regular, blanched and froze 4 packages of beans for later, and had fresh beans sauted in garlic & bacon for dinner. Yum!
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Night before last I moved the chicks to the big coop, sneaking them in at night and putting them on the roosts with the big hens. The next morning when I checked on them the big hens were all out in the yard, and the babies were still in the coop. By afternoon they had gotten brave enough to go out in the yard too, and I saw them running around enjoying the grass and their new freedom. It’s so nice to see them out of the tractor finally!
So last night I went out to check on them around 11pm, and there were no babies in the coop, just the big hens. I got a flashlight and went out in teh yard and found them all hunkered down next to the fence. So I picked them up two at a time and gently put them in through the chicken door to the coop. I had left a light on in the coop, and they slowly made their way in and found a spot on the roost.
When I had all seven in there, I went back around to the other side of the coop and watched until everyone was on a roost. Some of them went all the way to the top roost and squeezed in with the big chickens, and got a few pecks on the head for their trouble. But pretty soon everyone was settled in together, big and little all on the same roosts. So I turned off the light and went to bed.
This morning first thing I saw was the chicks back out in the yard, running around, flapping, and chasing each other. What fun! I love to see happy chickens!
Steff Does Stuff! 
