Sunday Funday

Today, Monday, I am officially on vacation! A week away from work is just what I need!

This week might be full of all sorts of things that I think that I will get done. There are two things for sure that I know that we'll accomplish - First, Meatie Batch #2 will graduate to Freezer Camp on Saturday and second, I will be sowing a bunch of seeds (greens) into the hoop house bed. I would like to get the garlic into one of the garden boxes, but I will need help getting the fence back up around the box. The chickens abhor a nicely tilled/planted box. They would get in there quick and dig everything up! The netting wouldn't be a bad idea either, so that might happen as well.

The weekend went by pretty quick, as usual. Yesterday I got the rest of the Freedom Ranger chicken into jars and processed. BOOM - cooked meat on the shelf! This time around I had a little help from the hubs. It took me a couple of hours to part out the three chicken from a few weeks ago. I didn't want to spend too much time working on the last five from the freezer. The cool thing is that I filled 7 jars with legs, thighs and breast meat, just like last time...

Canned Chicken Meat!

The only thing I did differently this time is that I added water to each jar. So we have some broth to keep the meat tasty. 

Now, I have five carcasses that I will now use to make even MORE bone broth. I have so much broth on the shelf! More is not a bad thing though. As winter comes I'm sure that we'll be using the broth and some of the chicken to make soup. So easy!

It's lunch time on Monday and I've already gotten the greens seeds planted in the hoop house. I also took the opportunity to bring the Saffron Crocus planters into the hoop house. I'm glad I did as the chickens did jump into the garden box that I placed them into and started to scratch up a couple of the planters. I'm so annoyed, but I only have myself to blame. I should have known better - they will get into whatever has plain soil and start digging away. 

Today has been filled with enough outdoor activities, it's time to do some indoor stuff now.

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. 

5 Things Friday

Let's try this out. I've decided to recap the last week as a way to actually get at least one post out a week. This doesn't mean that I won't be posting on the regular ('cause I haven't), but this way I'll be sure to visit this space more than once a week.

1. Adventures in Pressure Canning - over the past couple of months I have been slowly adding canned food to the pantry. These projects are a weekend thing and I've been pleased with how most things have turned out. Last Saturday I prepped about 20 pounds of Salvaterra tomatoes to make into sauce. On Sunday I got everything jarred up and into the canner and added 10 pints of sauce to the pantry. I've really enjoyed picking out new recipes to try and getting some quick and easy, throw together meals on the shelf. So far we have enjoyed Sloppy Joes - on more than one occasion, and Chicken Pot Pie. Tom's favorite thing is the pears from our trees. I am looking forward to trying the baked beans that I did a couple of weeks ago. Since I work full-time and the weekends are full with chores and errands (when needed) and church I figured the least I could do is spend some time getting food ready for future meals. 

2. Wild Fires in the Willamette Valley and in the Gifford Pinchot. The fires actually started Labor Day weekend and have been going strong until today. Very early this morning we had a pretty impressive Thunderstorm and rain too...YAY!  Well, the rain hasn't been as heavy as it could be for September in the Pacific NW, but it was rain none the less. The air quality has improved to "Unhealthy" from "Hazardous." So being outside will definitely be more pleasant and won't be nearly as smoky. We have not really had sunshine since last Tuesday and I was getting a little depressed. The smoke settled in on September 9th and stayed. Every once in a while you could see a sun ball, but not actual sunshine. It has been a long week!

3. We celebrated our 29th Wedding Anniversary last week. We had planned to go to the Willamette Valley Pie Company and have lunch and meander our way back home. Obviously, that was no longer an option. A trip to the coast would be like staying home - air quality was just as good. So we ended up shopping for our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes and then decided to have a nice quiet steak dinner at home. 

4. Turkeys! Even though the air quality has been terrible, it didn't seem nearly as bad at our house as it did at my work. So I grabbed one of my face masks and wetted it down and went to hang with the turkeys. Our White Holland Turkeys have been with us for three months and are just over three months old. They are so fun and friendly which is a welcome change from the chickens who are just looking for a hand out. The turkeys know that food comes from us, but they don't run up and beg for food...well they do in the evening. These goofballs spend most of the day free ranging and then are ushered back in to their area with the Meaties. They might get some scratch then, but if not they know that they will get some at bed time.

5. Broody Betty. Well, since we couldn't break Betty of her broody ways, we gave her duck eggs 4 weeks ago. Early yesterday morning those eggs hatched and we now have three new Magpie Ducklings! Three is the most that she has had so far so probably in about a month or two she will be getting ready to rejoin the flock and leave the babies behind. When there were two (Leona and Walter) I think she stuck with them for about two months, maybe less. When she had the one duckling I think she stuck with that one longer, just because there was just one. Well, the three will be interesting. I predict that we'll be taking over raising them after a couple of months. Until then we are going to enjoy watching Betty with her little trio of waterfowl.