The Dehydrator

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, farm, food, garden, jack2 Comments

I am taking a class about food preservation, and a couple weeks ago we learned about dehydrators. I got to bring the class dehydrator home to finish our lab assignment, and I loved it! I have never cared much for the dehydrated fruits you get from the store, but these were fresh and crisp but not so hard you’ll break a tooth. The pineapple came out like natural candy! So I wanted one bad!

This week I easily sold all my pullets (baby chickens), and actually made a profit (miracle of miracles) so I felt like I could splurge and a get a dehydrator, tah dah!

It’s really simple, just a fan and a heating element, so it blows warm air over the food trays and dries stuff out. It can be used for fruits, veg, jerky, herbs, or even drying flowers for crafts.

I did some apples and bananas, then tried peppers and pineapple. The pineapple is ridiculously good. The peppers come out crunchy and sweet – I’m going to try sprinkling them on a pasta dish.

I suppose it could be used to make dog treats!
I’m enjoying learning how to use it! It’s really going to be nice to have this summer and fall when I have too much produce from the garden, or too much fruit from the orchard. Last year I had to let a lot of pears and stuff go to the chickens because I didn’t know what to do with it all. And the herbs that went to waste at the end of the year when the plants started dying down? Into the dehydrator! I think this is going to be a very useful addition to my kitchen/garden.

Too Early! Again!

On By stefrobrtsIn garden1 Comment

I should have listened to my friends who said don’t plant until the end of May! Or my husband, who said it was still too early! But my other friends who had already planted and didn’t know what I was waiting for were just too much peer pressure for me (I buckle easily), and that week of 70+ degree weather was too much, and I planted them. Well, for the last few days it has been windy, the kind that knocks over trees, driving rain, even hail, and brrrrrrr- COLD! It’s 46 out there right now! My heritage tomatoes are bucking up pretty well so far, but the tomatoes I started from seed were looking kind of sad. So I took action:

I put tomato cages around them, and put plastic bags over them. I’m hoping this will catch enough heat to help them recover a bit. Personal greenhouses. I think I will do the heritage tomatoes tonight after I go pick up some more tomato cages. The bags, luckily, are from our styro-peanuts we use for packing materials, so I have lots of those bags around. So it’s a cheap solution to hopefully keep my tomatoes going.

But next year, I’m waiting until June, no matter what!!!

🙂

My Day Off

On By stefrobrtsIn barclay, garden3 Comments

Wednesdays are our Sunday. The store is closed Tuesday/Wednesday, so it’s time to catch up on all the stuff we fell behind on during the week. So today we started by working on the fence:

Last week we spent a good chunk of a day pulling all the fence boards off, putting up wire fencing, and replacing the fence boards. We did this to the whole front stretch of fence between the yard and the pasture in an effort to keep Barclay from going out there to eat sheep poo and chase the sheep. Within five minutes of letting him out, he had found a spot wide enough to crawl through and was back out eating poo! So today we fixed every possible spot he could squeeze through (I hope), mostly along the fence where the shelter/garden is.  There wasn’t enough wire in the roll to do that section, so we just have to put up more wood rails until he can’t slip through.

Then we worked out in the garden spreading bark chips on the paths. It has been a long process trying to get the garden finished. Although the cardboard and mulch is a no-dig method, it is certainly NOT a no-shovel method. I think my arms are permanently ‘rubber’ from all the shoveling I’ve been doing! Dave was a lot of help. He just whipped off his shirt and got to shoveling bark chips – why, I could watch that all day! 🙂 And look at the result, the garden looks beautiful, instead of walking around on cardboard covered paths!

Yesterday I planted five heritage tomato plants in the garden. That’s a total of 9 tomatoes planted, and lots of spinach, lettuce, beets, chard, and three types of squash. Also some herbs. Then today we got hit with a wind storm! Rain started just as we were getting wore out spreading bark chips, and then strong winds. I hope the plants are all ok out there!

Yesterday I used the proceeds from selling my chicks to buy a food dehydrator (yay!), so today I dried some apples and bananas. Later I’m going to dry some red bell peppers, but I’ll do it right before bed so they can dry overnight. We did peppers in food preservation class, and they come out so sweet you can snack on them like candy!

Then I did some laundry, went to the grocery store, bought a couple chickens from the ‘cheap meat’ (marked down for quick sale) section, came home and cut them up and put the pieces in the freezer, put the yucky pieces in the stockpot, took Barclay for a walk at BG Lake, came home and cooled off the stock and put 10 pints of chicken stock in the freezer (I need a bigger freezer), cleaned up the kitchen, did the dishes, and got the meat marinating for tonight’s dinner, and took the dogs outside to play just as the sun was going down.

If I do my job right, Barclay will be like this for the rest of the evening!

Now time to take a rest and watch some Dr Who. That will make it a perfect day off 🙂

Chicks and Mama hen

On By stefrobrtsIn 2010chicks, chicken tractor, chickens2 Comments

Mama hen and chickies are doing great. She takes them out and shows them how to scratch around for bugs, then when they get cold they snuggle under her with just a head sticking out here and there. They look so cozy!

It’s funny how hens lay their eggs and never give them a second thought until something clicks with them to go broody. Then they will set those eggs until they hatch, and raise their chicks with great devotion, fluffing up to scare off predators, until the chicks are big enough to look after themselves. Then they kind of forget about them and go back to doing their own thing again. It’s the chicken circle of life 🙂

Funny sheep story

On By stefrobrtsIn farm3 Comments

After the 4H meeting broke up, I was out checking the sheep water, and I noticed one of the sheep running around like mad. Then I saw she had snagged herself on a blackberry vine, which had come loose and was stuck to her butt, and she thought it was chasing her! So she charged around the field, getting all the other sheep’s attention, until the vine fell off. It lay in the middle of the field and the flock cautiously approached it, wanting to see what this scary monster was. I went back to filling the water bucket, chuckling about how silly sheep were, then I looked up to see the flock racing past, along with another sheep who had the vine stuck on her butt!!! I just about fell over laughing! Silly sheep!

4H llama shearing party

On By stefrobrtsIn 4H, farm, llamas1 Comment

Today we had the 4H llama club meeting at my house, and everyone brought their llamas. After a potluck and socializing, my neighbor Kelley came over and sheared the llamas. It was a good day, llamas got cleaned up for upcoming summer shows, and there were kids running all over our farm playing with dogs, harassing chickens (one ended up in the neighbor’s yard, apparently deciding that was a safer place to be until the kids were gone), and generally having a good time. Lots of fun!

 My old buddy Scoops was there. A polite gentleman, as always.
Kohl brought my old llama Patrone. He’s grown since I gave him away! Both of them, actually 🙂
Here Jamie takes a quiet moment to comfort her llama after the tension of shearing.
Funny face!
I gave the camera to the kids to take pictures of whatever they wanted, and I got back a picture of Kohl snuggling a chicken!

Mama hen has four – no, SIX little chicks

On By stefrobrtsIn 2010chicks, chickens2 Comments

There were six eggs, but so far we’ve only seen four chicks. I didn’t want to bother her. Have you ever seen a look that said more clearly ‘bug off’?! I’ll leave her alone. It’s so fun to see how devoted broody hens are to the idea of hatching those eggs, and their reward is having a little brood of chicks to take care of. It’s one of my very favorite things 🙂

Look at those little fluffy-kins! They are all Big Blue’s babys. Now we’ll see what happens when you mix a blue cochin with buff orpingtons, white cochin, or whatever the heck that black hen is.

Update – Momma took them out of the nest this morning and there were SIX little fluffybutts following her – three grey and three black!

Chicks go exploring

On By stefrobrtsIn 2010chicks, barclay, chickens, mighty3 Comments

This morning I took the front off the brooder box and let the chicks out to play.

Grass! Under my feet! What’s a bird to do?!

Since I’m going to keep some of these chicks, I decided to go ahead and introduce them to the rest of the flock by letting everyone out into the backyard, which is not anybody’s territory, so they could meet on even ground. It seems to have worked great.

Big chickens and little chickens, all pecking around and hunting for scratch. I didn’t see anyone getting picked on. The chicks stayed close to their shed while the adults wandered farther out into the back yard looking for bugs.

The cat was on guard for a while, but then she fell asleep. The rooster is not impressed with her work ethic!

Soon the dogs were sunbathing too, soaking up the warm sun 🙂

And the cat had to move to a shadier spot.

Just a beautiful day. One of those that makes me so happy to live in the country.

Gardening – potatoes and tomatoes

On By stefrobrtsIn garden1 Comment

It was beautiful today! 80, at least! I went right out in the morning and started having some fun with my chores 🙂

That row of straw is my potato row. I set down about 8 red seed potatoes and covered them with a foot of straw. When the plants start peeking above the straw I’m supposed to mound more straw on them. Supposedly this will result in the potatoes actually growing in the straw instead of under the dirt. First time for this technique for me.

And by afternoon I couldn’t control myself and planted four tomatoes. These are extras. If they don’t make it, I have backups of all these varieties. I have a feeling they’ll be fine. I planted them deep, covered them in straw, and put on a cold cap just to protect them the first few nights.

I can’t wait for warm tomatoes from my garden! All this work will be worth it!

🙂