First Friday - Top 5

This past week...wow - it went fast and slow at the same time. 

I decided that it was time for a vacation day to do stuff at home, so I took Monday September 28th off. It was a productive day of doing projects at home and I needed the day away from work just to be refreshed just a little. 

So here's what happened this past week...

1. MORE Canning - Last Saturday I spent part of the day canning some of our homegrown chicken. The first thing that needed to happen is to part each chicken so I could can the legs, thighs and breast meat. It was a very slow process since I have not cut a chicken up before. It was gross, but had to be done, so I powered through. I wanted to do this so that we would have room in the freezer for the 26 meaties that will be processed in a couple of weeks. Anyway, the method was super easy. Basically filling each jar about 2/3 full of chicken and place the lid and ring on and BOOM ready for the canner. I got the idea from Living Traditions Homestead on YouTube go HERE to check out their video. I decided to start with three chickens just in case parting out the chicken got to be too much. It wasn't terrible, I got the job done. Next time I think it will go quicker. There will be a next time since we have 5 more in the freezer that I would like to go ahead the process.

Homegrown Freedom Rangers

Ready for the Canner

This turned out alright

2. The Junior Swine - Victor & Bridgette turned 6 months old on September 28th. Now that Rex & Fiona are nearly two and half years old I can hardly remember what they looked like at six months old! V & B are so good! Actually Miss Bridgette is quite the bully at meal time. So much that poor Victor submits to his sister and will walk away. He is so passive...compliant...peace-keeper. We actually need him to eat up...he is our BaconHamChop!

The Chubby Bubbies!

3. More Canning - On Monday I decided to can the bone broth that I made out of the chicken carcasses from Saturday. Waste not, want not. Since we started growing our own meat chickens I don't think that we have bought broth at the store, but maybe a couple of times. When we process the chicken we save the feet for broth. When we roast a chicken for dinner we take the carcass and make broth. Since we usually end up just eating the legs, things, wings and breast it's a shame to waste the rest of the carcass. Plus broth is the easiest thing to make! I also took time to make Strawberry Lemonade concentrate for Tom. It's a recipe from the new canning book that I bought on Amazon. It was a good day to just do the stuff that bring me joy and also to hang out with the critters when I wasn't doing inside stuff.

Six more quarts of broth and not quite three pints of
Strawberry Lemonade concentrate

4. Beef Box order - We have been ordering grass fed Beef from a "local" ranch for a little while. Previously we were ordering Butcher Box, but I had become a little dissatisfied with the meat and not really sure if it was really good meat. Since we grow our own chicken I wasn't ordering chicken, now that we have Victor, I don't need the pork either. Well, actually, we won't be harvesting Victor for a little while, so we still pick up some pork at the store here and there. Last year Beef Box showed up on my Instagram feed. Hmmm...what is this place? So I checked it out and decided to place an order and dump Butcher Box. I'm glad that we made the switch! The best ground beef and steaks. This week we had tri tip and it was sooo good! The other thing that makes this small biz special is that they are local - out of Cove, Oregon. That means our order ships on a Monday and is delivered on Wednesday. Our Butcher Box orders came from California and it took probably 4 days. They also used bio degradable packing peanuts. Which is great, but it always went everywhere! I'm not sure how our meat is packed from Beef Box as I have yet to actually be home when it is delivered, but I think there is a lot less packing materials. The BEST thing - Hand written notes from Gabby! Every. Single. Time.

 

5. The Turkeys & Meaties - If I haven't mentioned this before, the turkeys and the meaties are in the same area, sharing the same Stress Free Chicken Tractor. Most days the turkeys make their way out of the paddock and free range until their late afternoon meal. At that time they are ushered back to the meaties and spend the rest of the evening poking around looking for things to nibble on. Sometimes a couple of them well "escape" again. When we go out after our dinner they usually make their way back. This is the time that they get some quality human time. Sometimes they want nothing to do with us and will just continue eating or sitting off to the side by themselves. SOMETIMES they get curious about what the meaties are doing. One of the poults was curious about what the two meaties were doing and just casually walked over to check out what the fuss was all about. 

This weekend I plan to relax a bit. Putting my canning obsession on hold for the weekend, but will be looking toward finding something else to get into jars and process. 

Farm Life is a Busy Life.