Currently

On July 9th a vendor that the fire district deals with ended up testing positive for Covid 19. This person really isn't a vendor, but someone who provides a service to the district and to members for personal requests.

Since I am the person who has the first contact with anyone coming to the station there was a possibility that I was exposed to the virus. So I was sent home and instructed to contact my Primary Healthcare Provider. Blah Blah Blah...I got the nasal swab and was then told to quarantine for 14 days (from day of contact). I am now on day 14 of my quarantine and will be going back to work tomorrow (July 21). I have yet to receive my results, but have no symptoms and feel fine. 

After spending several days waiting for Quest Diagnostics to get my results sent to the doc I have been working on a couple of things around our farm. It was time to learn how to use my brand spankin' new All American Pressure Canner. I've only had it since May, but I have been a little apprehensive about figuring out how to use it and put it off. 

I've been using the Turkey Fryer stove thing

Well, having to quarantine and opting to just have the time off and not work remotely gave me a little bit of freedom. Of course, now I decide to jump into this toward the end of my isolating period. That's how I roll people.

On Thursday of last week I decided it was time to at least figure out how to prep the monster and try out a test run. I had to do that anyway. After watching a couple of YouTube videos I got my supplies and had Tom show me how to use the Turkey fryer stove. Easy-Peasy.

My first attempt was to make sure that I was actually placing the lid on correctly and making sure that it was properly sealed. It wasn't and there was water sputtering out at different parts of the canner. So, my thought was that I probably didn't tighten the wing-nuts enough. Sure enough by batch number three and tightening each time, that was the problem. Lesson learned - just keep twisting until they can't move anymore! 

Saturday afternoon I went ahead and did a batch of broth. I took several containers from the stand freezer to process and this is what we ended up with - 

Two Chicken, Two Pork and one with a mix of both

So, these turned out and all of them were bubbling like crazy when I took them out of the canner. The next morning I ran another batch of four jars and they also turned out well! Today In an effort to clear out the freezer even more I canned my Salsa Verde from last October. 

Broth & Salsa Verde

I think I got this canning thing down. All I need to know is how many pounds of pressure to do and the length of time to process. It's really not as scary as I thought it would be. 

We have been joking about me canning everything. Well, I'm not going to do that, but I will can a lot of stuff! I'm still hopeful that I will have plenty of tomatoes to make sauce. If I'm lucky I'll have some pumpkins to process and instead of roasting, pureeing and throwing into the freezer I'll can cubes of pumpkin! Depending on how our potato harvest goes I'll can that too! 

My impressions of  pressure canning now that I have figured it out is that it's a good thing and a lot of fun! What I like is that we have freed up a bunch of space in the stand freezer and the refrigerator freezer. We'll be harvesting more meat chickens in a few months so I'll need more space to store the 26 birds that we have in the brooder. Since we switched to a different type of meat bird, one that will grow larger, we'll need the extra space to store them.

What needs to change. As pictured above, I have one choice to use my canner. Since my stove top is smooth, it was not recommended to use my canner on. Okay, Plan B....hmmm. I was concerned that I would either have to return the canner OR get a separate single burner type thing. There was no way that I would be returning it! After some research and thinking I remembered that we have that turkey fryer which we found on craigslist and bought it specifically for scalding our meat chickens on harvest day. SCORE!! The fryer unit was either on the floor in the garage or Tom got it down for me and I hoped really big that the canner would fit in the ring. Now that I have had a chance to try the canner out on the turkey fryer stove I decided that a knob with Lo-Med-Hi would be nice. None of this guessing stuff with turning the valve incrementally until I reached the proper heat level. The first real canning session I ended up turning it off. I lit that back up so fast! Anway,  MORE research brought me to this:

Camp Chef Explorer (photo credit CampChef.com)

Then I decided that I needed to see if there were any video reviews on YouTube. What kind of question is that? Of course there's a video review! When I typed in Camp Chef Explorer Review this video popped up.

So this will be our next BIG purchase for the farm. Most of the purchases we make are to add to the farm somehow anything from equipment like the Troy Bilt rototiller to livestock/chicks and everything in between. This isn't a huge purchase, but it will be a good one!

With the food system as it is, kinda broken, this canning thing will be a regular occurrence in our home. We can buy things like dry beans in bulk, meat on sale and oooh...the boxes of fresh produce at Wilco! Since my bean plants have been attacked by something, probably a bunny, I'll have to buy beans to put-up. I'm not a fan of canned beans, but my other half is. Doing things to keep him happy is always a good thing. Then there are the two giant pear trees - another thing I'm not a fan of :( I'll have to try canning a fair amount of pears this year. Maybe this will be the year that I gain an appreciation for pears. We'll see...

Here's to another canning session coming this weekend!

Farm Life Best Life!!

Official Name

This photo was from when the shed was mostly whole

When we received the certificates for Rex & Fiona stating that they were officially registered and we had their pedigrees in hand it was time to make a decision. Do we REALLY want to register their offspring? After some discussion the answer turned out to be yes. 

Since Guinea Hogs continue to be listed on the "Threatened" list on the Livestock Conservancy breed list we think it's important to continue to add to those numbers and hopefully helping to recover the very special breed that they are.

What's the deal with the title of this post? Recently I did some google searches for where to buy swine ear tags and found that a Premises Identification Number would be required. Okaaaay...After going through the USDA site and then reading about how to obtain this number it became clear that we would need a farm name. Pigs 'n Poultry was just something that I came up with to call this blog and my instagram account. I have changed those names a couple of times, but I still like to identify those accounts with Pigs 'n Poultry. 

Our official name will be Windswept Farm. 

How did we (I) come up with this name? For the past couple of weeks as I was thinking a lot about what makes our farm special to us. Seriously came up blank. A couple of nights ago as we were sitting outside watching the critters I decided to look up a farm name generator website. There's a site for EVERYTHING! So after clicking through a couple of times and reading off names to Tom (i.e. Prairie Farm, Rainbow Hills, Happy Farm, White Stag - all NO), I came across Windswept Acres. Now that one clicked! We both liked it a lot and instead of "acres" I said Windswept Farm. 

This makes sense for us because almost every evening here is windy - sometimes there are days when it's windy all day! Anyway, one can come and visit us and clearly see what has been affected by the winds that we experience here. Metal roofing has been blown off the old equipment shed at the back of our property. There are trees that have a permanent lean to them - one was a very tall cedar tree that was right behind our house and the tree actually leaned toward our house. That's kind of a unsettling thing. So we are now Windswept Farm. Which I totally LOVE! 

In the near future I will have to come up with the purpose of our farm and what we are doing here. That shouldn't be too difficult, but it should be done. Basically nothing different than what is going on now, but now officially :)

Farm Life Best Life!

My Latest Hobby

ICE CREAM making!

During the week I was off on vacation I think I made ice cream three times. Then last weekend I made two batches and then another batch this morning. That's a lot of milk and heavy cream being transformed into creamy goodness that Mr. Tom enjoys so much.

Here's the crazy thing, I am not a fan of ice cream. Every now and then I'll have some ice cream, but it's not my go to and when I do have ice cream, it's not a huge portion. I like my free scoop from Baskin Robins that I get for my birthday every year - our insurance company sends out free scoop birthday postcards every year - SCORE! I also will get a craving for some Jamoca Almond Fudge like ice cream from the store, but that's about it. 

I guess I'm making up for the last couple of years that I didn't get my Pampered Chef Ice Cream maker out of the cabinet, maybe once. That was it. I don't know why I thought to make ice cream, it is such a random thing for me. 

The whole process is fun, for me and I'm getting it figured out. The first couple were fairly basic, once with a trio of berries, the second with homemade vanilla and the third was chocolate. Now I'm just thinking of how I might do some fancy flavors or maybe just come up with some interesting things to mix in before freezing. Tom was thinking of ideas from Ben & Jerry's. That's fine and all, but I would rather just play around and figure out what works best for me and what we like rather than the commercial stuff that's out there. 

Since this is a three day weekend I might have to make another batch of frozen dairy goodness. There is still one pint's worth of heavy cream that I will create yet another yummy something, something. All I need to do is get some whole milk and some inspiration for an exciting new flavor.

Farm Life...make frozen treat goodness.

Legit

This past weekend was completely frustrating on many levels. From outside projects to kitchen projects. Yep...I was not in a good headspace for most of the weekend.

But....all I needed was...an envelope from the American Guinea Hog Association!This one was extra special and not at all expected so soon. 

Registration Certificates for Rex & Fiona!!

These two are bonafide!

This process was started several weeks ago and we have been waiting patiently for the transfer to happen. Well, as with so many things, things come up and Farmer Jason of Cascade Meadows Farm must have been super busy. Tom and I had made our most recent visit to the farm on June 16th to pick-up 6 White Holland Turkey poults. 

Four of the Six

At that time Jason mentioned that they would be sitting down to go through a bunch of transfer paperwork in the next day or two. Last week on June 22nd, I got a text saying that the registration/transfer had been completed and to look for the papers in 4-6 weeks. YAY! 

Back to my awful weekend - on Saturday I went to run an errand and then I spied a big white envelope on the passenger seat of Tom's truck - I grabbed it and took a look and the return address was from AGHA....

AAAAAHHHHH....the day JUST got better!

This just made my day. Our original babies are now officially, Cascade's Rex and Cascade's Fiona. Any offspring of theirs that we choose to register will be with our not-yet-decided farm name. We probably should tag Bridgette now while she is still young.

So what does this mean? Any of our pigs that we decide to register will become part of the permanent record of this very special breed. There are not many American Guinea Hog breeders in our area, so the demand will not be high, but at least our babies will be counted toward the recovery of the AGH. 

Fortunately, this breed is gaining more numbers over time which is very encouraging. However, they are not as popular as the KuneKune or a Mangalitsa. What I love about AGH is how friendly they are, even as piglets.

Once Fiona had her litter earlier this year we made it a point to handle them as much as we could. They took to us fairly easy and they were quick to plop down for belly rubs and would come to us when there were snacks to be had. Since this is the only breed that I have had experience with we don't have anything to compare them to. From all of my early research, I was convinced before we brought Rex & Fiona home that they would be as docile as I have read and they certainly live up to that reputation. Definitely as beginner's pig!

For anyone who is interested in moving on from poultry to an actual furry farm critter I highly recommend this wonderful breed. They do not disappoint!

Farm life is the best life. Just ask the American Guinea Hogs!