Crocus Sativus

Has anyone ever used Saffron? I did once and I don't remember why...maybe some obscure recipe that I found that called for it and I happened to find it at some random store that I don't remember now...maybe it was Trader Joe's.

ANYWAY

It has been a long time since I got that saffron and it is safe to say that it wasn't a memorable experience (man I wish I could remember what it was for), but for some reason using the saffron has stuck in my mind.

Not how it was used or anything, just the fact that I found it and it had less than a dozen strands of the goods in the teeny-tiny bottle.

As I continue to grow stuff I've been thinking about the different things that I want to try and woudn't you know it Saffron came to mind. Back in April or May I did some research then decided to place an order on the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds website.

Then promptly forgot that I had placed an order...but only for a couple of months.

The order shipped in September and I still had to wait to do anything with them until this month. That's only because I didn't know where I wanted to put them. My friend who had been gardening in our yard decided that she no longer had the time or inclination to plant more than what she is now able to grow at her home and essentially gifted the garden boxes to us. So I spent a couple of days weeding out one of the long narrow boxes and got the bulbs planted. That was on October 16. There was already growth on many of the bulbs so I did my best to not damage the growth and successfully planted all twenty-five.

This week I was out messing around with the ducks and happened to take a look at the box with the crocus planted in it and this is what I saw:

There were three blooms just standing tall and looking so pretty. Now that it is raining the blooms have wilted and the stigmas were all ruined. Note to self, don't wait to harvest the saffron next year.

I hadn't planned on harvesting this year, but now I know that I'll have to do it when the time is right and when it hasn't rained.

Like many things that I try, this is an experiment. Maybe one day I'll have enough to sell super small quantities to a select few people...people that know how to use saffron at least. It's a future dream maybe.

Farm Life...

Learning a Hard Lesson

Sometimes lessons are learned because of our own sheer ignorance. Sometimes it's because of a poor lack of judgement or just being lazy. Or maybe because there are too many balls in the air (as in juggling).

Well, we had a hard lesson come almost a couple of weeks ago in the form of losing some of our waterfowl. Back on the morning of October 11th Tom came running in the house and frantically called out that Lenny was gone...

WHAT?!

I jumped into action ran outside only to find that Lenny - our beloved goose - was truly gone. We did see a smallish pile of feathers outside of the duck pen. However, nothing else was amiss with the fence or within the pen. Immediately we had to count the ducks to see if any of them were missing. Thankfully all eight were still there.

Okay, so our buddy Lenny was gone...and not to minimize that tragedy, we did have the rest of the flock to tend to. Especially his little buddy Shelly. I could tell that he was searching for his pal which made me feel so sad for him. However, we were thankful at the same time to still have the ducks.

What happened a couple of days later was devastating. Saturday morning we went out to start on the morning chores and on the weekends the waterfowl are generally my responsibility. I made my way out to the pen and only saw TWO of the ducks and one of them outside of the corrale - this is highly unusual and I know with Lenny gone things have been a little different, but not this different.

OH NOOOOOOO!!!! After a quick search to see if maybe the others were in the shelters...nothing. The two that were in the corrale ran out so quickly that I couldn't tell who was left.

Three of the ducks were still with us. THREE!

After alerting Tom to the situation his first question was whether or not Shelly was one of the three. Sadly, he was not - we lost the originals. The two that started this whole waterfowl thing we have going on. Realizing that we still had to move on, I tried to get the three ducks fed, but they were not interested. In fact, all they wanted to do was play in the pink pool. So I let them do their thing and adjust to life as a trio.

We continued on our morning and made sure that the three were all settled in. Later in the morning we made our way to have coffee and after a short while we returned home. I went to check on the kids and was surprised to see that there were four ducks.

Hoping that it would be Shelly I went and took a closer look, but it was not. It was another female which is fine, but having Shelly back would have been the best gift. Well, this little one must have been hiding in the brush between our property and the neighbor. Tom had to walk to see if maybe any others might have been still in hiding. There were none. So we have 3 little ladies and Gordon.

The Fab Four - from top to bottom: Gladys, Bernadette, Phyllis and Gordon

It has taken me almost all week to settle into this new normal and we are very protective of these little goof balls. They are extremely resilient and it only took a couple of days before Bernadette was feeling social and started hanging with the other three. Her partner was taken and she was quiet the first day and not eating much. I was afraid that she wouldn't survive the night as I am sure that she was attacked and somehow was able to get away. Which is what probably happened to the one that was hiding. They both were quite dirty and moving a little slow.

They are all doing well now and we are thankful for the 4 that we have left. We will definitely let them breed when the time comes. We are both missing the whole lot of them though, but hey there are still four and again, we are thankful! This past weekend they started becoming more vocal and their goofy little personalities were coming out again.

What took our waterfowl? Well, there wasn't anything wrong with the fence so we are pretty sure it wasn't a raccoon. Besides we haven't seen a raccoon at our house since we had the giant cedar tree taken down. There wasn't any evidence of the ducks being eaten or any blood nearby. I want to say that if it were a coyote that there would be NO ducks left and the fence would be messed up. Tom decided that it had to be an owl. Which I can believe they have perched on the old equipment shed in the past. However, it is hard for me to believe that an owl would take a goose, but we can't think of anything else given the condition of the corrale. Nothing was out of place...not one thing! There was a tidy pile of feathers at one end of the corrale, so whatever got the ducks had a little bit of a struggle.

Now that we are into our second week without the majority of our flock, I am slowly getting past this unfortunate incident and I resolve that nothing will be taken from our farmstead again.

One of the last pics of Lenny taken just a couple of days before his disappearance

Last pic of the hooligans - photo bombing the pea seedlings that were just planted

Our farm will never be the same, but we will be much more vigilant going forward. We do look forward to new possibilities and adding a pair of Embden Geese next spring and letting the Magpie squad breed.

For now, we have the Magpie squad in the yard and back in the chicken tractor with a length of Premier1 netting around their area so that when we are away for short periods of time, they can still be out in the yard foraging and playing in their pool or the sprinkler. At other times, we open up the fence so they can roam around. We always thought that Lenny was their protector and kind of kept an eye out for them. Because of that we are quite protective of them right now. They have adapted fairly quick and they are almost no trouble at all getting them to go back into the tractor at the end of the day or when we are going to be away for an extended period of time.

Even in the midst of tragedy farm life is the best life.

Now That The Chickens Are Done...

What do we do now?

There is so much still that needs to be done and it appears that I am starting to run out of time! Well, that might be an exaggeration, but I feel that sometimes. The days a getting shorter and my To-Do list seems to get longer. That's mainly because I keep coming up with things that I could probably do with this, that and the other thing. There are two things that absolutely need to happen this month - within the next couple of weeks would be preferable.

First....Garlic. For the first time ever I decided to order seed garlic and since I didn't know what I wanted I went with a sampler.

I'm pretty excited about planting garlic. I tried to do garlic a couple of years ago, but then after a little research realized that garlic needs to be planted in the fall. Maybe I kinda knew that. Also, I used what store variety we had hoping that something would come up. I think a couple did - but that was it. Since then I decided to move on to other things. I'm ready to go back to it and give a go. More than that this needs to be successful - seed garlic is not cheap...well, it's not overly expensive, but for $25 I want some quality garlic coming out of the garden. That's not a lot to ask for, right?

The other thing that needs to be planted would be my Saffron Crocus. I'm still trying to come up with a space for those. I may have to just plop those into one of the garden boxes that are now officially mine. The only thing is these dudes are fall bloomers. So I'll need to figure out what will be okay to grow with these until fall rolls around. Maybe a box of pretty herbs and flowers...hmmm...

crocus sativus

What will I do with the Saffron? I have no idea. I just had the idea to put something special into the garden and see what happens. This will be interesting. What I do know is that saffron is an expensive spice. Either way, it can be quite spendy for the amout that you get and how long it will last. I got it once and I can't think what I used it for. So, this time next year maybe I'll have some saffron flowers blooming and then maybe I'll have a few strands of saffron to try out. I'll have to learn how to deal with these things so as not to destroy what I'm hoping to use in the kitchen.

Always trying something new!

Ultimate Harvest of 2018

July 5, 2018

September 22, 2018

Okay, so we are four days past the ultimate harvest of the year. I have had a chance to think about the importance of growing and processing our own birds and to do a little research of the method that we have seen over and over again on YouTube from other homesteaders (which I still do not claim to be).

When first mentioning that we are growing meat chickens the first thing that people ask after we say that this is a DIY project is, " Are you going to cut their heads off?"

Now I understand that's how many people see home chicken processing. I know that my mom did that, but I think...I'm not positive, but I am almost sure that she cut the head and then placed the chicken in a big metal drum while it was slowly dying it's awful and inhumane death.

The method that we went with is called Halal or can also be considered Kosher. Which in the simplest terms means that the kill is done quickly with a slit of the jugular and left to bleed out. From my research this is the Muslim tradition. If done correctly, there shouldn't be need for a second cut, but sometimes that happens. Like when I decide it's time for me to get one kill in and there are only three chickens left. All afternoon I was thinking how I should probably do at least one kill...and I kept meaning to, but was distracted with other tasks to hopefully make clean-up a little easier. In the end, clean up was the hardest...but I digress...I tried and Tom had to make another cut. While I did do one last year - sort of. This was easier, but still not enough for the bleed out to happen very quickly. I should have known better as they chicken was looking at me as if to ask what he or she had done to me to deserve a not so swift bleed out. Oh well, I'll have other opportunities at future processing times.

Three of the Rangers in Restraining Cones

After lots of google searches we decided that the birds would benefit from resting in the fridge overnight. This was to allow the rigor to leave the body. We let the birds sit overnight in the refrigerator and then placed them in a tub to brine the following day. Several people online had said that the brine would help make the chicken tender. Tom thought we should try half brined and half not, but in the end it was just easier to brine all of them.

On Monday it was time to drain and rinse and let the chicken dry...

Before bagging the birds we had to take the Poultry kit back to the Clark Conservation District and get our deposit money back :) The gentleman who helped us pointed out the "ring" around the top of the scalder and surmised that maybe we were not informed to be on the look out for that and to make sure that it was totally cleaned. Notes for next time - clean, clean and then clean some more. To be honest, the plucker was the most difficult to clean as the feathers got stuck underneath the rubber fingers. They did NOT want to come out very easily. There really is no way to avoid that unless we want to hand pluck. I will gladly spend the time getting the feathers out of the bazillion plucker fingers.

Once we returned we went ahead and started the process to bag the chickens. Oh My Goodness...I think that the shrink wrap bags is like the best thing EVER! Slide a chicken in the bag, place the tube in the cavity and get a zip tie on. Then a very short dip in boiling water and there is your perfectly bagged chicken!

This is just an overview of the weekend process. Would we do anything different? Sure...there is always room for improvement.

First, knives...a variety of sharp knives would have been better. Processing day came up pretty fast and we knew that the knife selection would be limited. In the end it worked out, but I suggested a trip to Good Will yesterday to see if we could find anything that would work. Luckily we found a set of kitchen knives (forged knives) that included a small clever and some shears for $6.99 (plus tax). That was an excellent find! Those will be easy to hone using the steel  or a bench grinder (if needed).

The other thing that we would do is place the scalder in the garage to protect it from the wind. At some point the pilot light went out because of the wind and the water temp dropped about 15 degrees cooler than it should have been. Tom figured out that the pilot light is not easy to see. Nothing a blow torch can't fix.

We will need to rethink the chill chest for after the birds have been eviscerated and ready to go into the refrigerator. Maybe an old refrigerator or a giant cooler. There is time, BUT now I'll be checking out craigslist for all sorts of stuff in the months to come.

The whole operation could be moved onto the lawn or maybe even directly in front of the garage. That way, when we are spraying stuff down or even emptying water out of things it will go into the lawn. That is something that we will explore next year.

Also, we might let the birds go one more week before processing them. That means more food for them, but that would also mean that the 3 pound birds that we had might weigh a little more.

While we are on the subject of weight - we ended up with 56 pounds of chicken from 15 birds - that averages out to 3.7 pounds per bird. I think that's a pretty awesome harvest at 11 weeks old.

Yep, I'm pretty excited about this chicken processing experience. I am ready to do this again...

Next Spring.

Farm Life Baby!