If I Can Do it Myself.....

Well, It's About Time I Got One.....

2012-01-12T16:06:00.000-08:00

Lookie at what I got for a late Christmas present which just arrived this week. I have been pining over a Le Creuset dutch oven for almost a decade and now I finally own one.

My dear husband got tired of me calling any cooking show host that had one a female dog (got to keep it clean here!). He knows I like doing the homework and finding the best price around so he gave me the cash in my Christmas card and said that I had to use the money to buy one.

So, here it is! It's over 7 quarts and beautiful. I just need to get cookin'...probably a beef stew will break it in. Figuratively speaking.

North Idaho Fair 2011

2011-08-31T12:15:00.000-07:00

The North Idaho Fair comes to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho in late August. We have missed very few of them in the 15 years that we have lived here. Now that I think about, the only year we missed was the summer I had our daughter in 2002.

Before Emma came into our lives, I was very big on entering canned items every year. I even won the Ball Canning Pickling Award twice. When Emma joined 4-H four years ago, she started entering her insect collections as a Cloverbud which is a non-competitive 4-H group for kids 5 to 7 years old.

This year was Emma's first year has a full fledged 4-H kid. Her projects were Entomology and Poultry. Once we found out that we had to come twice a day for the five days of the Fair to feed her chicken and its cage, we decided to have some fun and enter some things other than her two 4-H entries. Heck, maybe even win a little cash to help cover the gas on two twenty mile plus trips we had to make daily.

Emma entered a frame of honey comb from her beehive and a dozen large eggs from our Marans flock. Both went second place which made her very happy to say the least. The judge said the comb would have placed better if it did not contain two colors of honey: light on the edges and dark in the center.

I entered 9 canned items and did really well in Salsa divisions, both green and red by getting a second place ribbon for my salsa verde and tomato salsa. My sweet pickle relish also got a second and 3 of my jam entries placed in third. I was happy :)

Now Emma's 4-H Entomology Project did really well by going Grand Champion. She was so proud and cannot wait to participate in the project again next year.
Here's Emma showing her little Belgian bearded d'uccle pullet named "Pengu". In quality judging the little bird was awarded a blue ribbon and Emma took a fourth in Junior Fitting and Handling.

We are all looking forward to attending and participating in the Fair next year. We'll probably even enter more things, too and stay in the 4-H Camper Village so we don't have to drive back and forth so much.

Nature Never Ceases to Amaze

2011-08-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

I was topping off the cattle troth Saturday evening and I just happened to look down and see this beautiful little nest that must have blown out of one of the big grand firs in our yard. What a thing of beauty it was! I had to run in and grab my camera so I could take a picture of it before the sun slipped behind the hills.

Look at all the materials this little bird collected to build this nest: moss, horse hair, sticks, grass and even a few chicken feathers, too. Nature is simply one continuous ongoing miracle that never ceases to amaze and inspire me.

Diggin' in the Dirt

2011-07-29T05:33:00.000-07:00

Here in North Idaho we have two fun attractions that do not always get the attention they deserve both are near the small town of Clarkia. One is the Fossil Bowl and the other is Emerald Creek Garnet Area. If you have kids or like to dig in the dirt to find buried treasure then these activities are for you.

Here's a few of our fossil finds. You can take home as much as you want, there is no limit.Dawn redwoods are often found.Here's two halves to a leaf impression.Another dawn redwood.

Off to the garnet area. Yes, we actually paid to dig in the dirt! LOL!Cleaning our dirt in the sluice box with water to washing it away.

Picking through the remaining rock to find our garnet prize.

Here's some of the garnets we gleaned from our buckets of dirt. There are a couple in there over half an ounce in weight. What fun, this was a blast and I want to do it again before summer ends.

First Honey of the Summer

2011-07-27T16:06:00.000-07:00

We had family visiting this week from out of town and thought it might be fun to pull a frame of honey from one of the hives to let the kids try some comb honey.

I brought in a nice heavy frame and used a sharp-edged metal spatula to cut off some small chunks for every one. After everyone had their fill of honeycomb I scraped the remaining comb into jars to make chunk honey. Which is jarred honey with chunks of comb in it. It was just beautiful! And the honey was wonderful tasting, too.

If you are new to beekeeping and/or do not have access to a honey exacter, making chunk honey is a great way to harvest your honey and start using it in you home. I plan on extracting my honey but I plan always pulling a frame or two to enjoy the first honey of the season.

Spirit Lake Campout

2011-07-19T05:27:00.001-07:00

Last weekend we had the opportunity to camp at our friends' cabin on Spirit Lake here in North Idaho. I can call it a "campout" because we slept outside in our tent. ;)

This is the second year that we have met here to camp, cook, fish and have fun. Also, we collect insects for our children's 4-H Entomology Project collections. It's a hoot because the girls get to chasing butterflies and dragonflies with their nets. More often than not the parents get caught up into the hunt and start running after bugs, too.

I have to admit, I probably got more caught up in the fishing more than anything. I caught a lot of little bass but finally hooked into one work frying.

The sunrise was just gorgeous! There was a mist coming off the lake. We were lucky enough to see a moose swimming along the edge of the lake. Unfortunately I had a fishing rod in my hand instead of a camera.

The girls got out in the boat and paddled after a few bugs.

The geese had to be "evicted" from the area when we arrived but I'm sure they moved right back in after we vacated the grounds.

Cheddar Brats for Cheaters

2011-07-14T15:24:00.000-07:00

This weekend we have a camp out planned at our friend's cabin on Spirit Lake so I am making cheddar brats for all of us to cook over the campfire. When I want to make brats quick and easy I use Penzey's Bratwurst Sausage Seasoning which is a wonderful blend made in Wisconsin.

I also used a cheese product know as Hi Temp Cheddar Cheese. It's a cheese that has an extremely high melting point of around 500F. So it stays intact and does not melt when sausage is cooked or smoked. Cabelas now carries it and it is also available a LEM and Butcher Packer. Here's what I used for my seven pound batch of bratwurst:

4 1/2 pounds of ground venison
2 1/2 pounds of ground pork
7 TBS of Penzey's Bratwurst Seasoning

2 cups of Hi-Temp Cheddar Cheese
1 cup of cold water
16 ft of hog casings (soaked for 30 minutes and rinsed)

The water and the seasoning are mixed together first, then the meat is added and also mixed together. The Hi-Temp Cheddar Cheese is added and mixed after every thing else is well blended.
I used my large Kitchen Aid Pro stand mixer but I have to say that I would not recommend mixing such a large amount in this size mixer, I believe I'll keep it a six pounds or less next time around.
Into my 5 pound stuffer the prepared meat went and was cranked out into hog casings. I twisted the stuffed cases to make links. I'm still working on that skill, it's a balance of not over-loading the casings to the point that there is not room to twist them and form links.

If you have never made any sausage before and want to get your feet wet, this is a great sausage to make especially with the seasoning already measured and mixed for you. Even if you do not have a sausage stuffer you can make patties, too. Enjoy!

To Bee or Not to Bee...

2011-07-12T20:10:00.000-07:00

Last year we took on the new endeavor of beekeeping. We started with a package of Carniolan bees to install in our first hive. A package of bees consists of a mated queen with 3 pounds of worker bees. I instantly fell in love with our bees and could not wait to check in our hive every weekend.

I cannot recommend beekeeping enough. Keeping a hive or two requires very little time: about an hour a week during from late winter to late fall depending on where you live in the world. It's also amazing to observe the inside of the hive and what the bees are doing, not many people get to witness this.

If you think you might want to try beekeeping, I would recommend reading up on the topic as much as possible both in books and on the web. A great site that you can start reading right now is Beekeeping Lessons created by Long Lane Honey Farms. Beekeeping for Dummies is a fun and educational read that's loaded with information that can get you started in beekeeping.

Also, you will want to find out if there are any local beekeeping clubs in your area that offer beekeeping classes. This is how I started out and it was very valuable to learn with hands-on experience. The day we pick up our first bee package we actually got to watch how to install a package of bees into our hives.

For beekeeping supplies in your area you will save yourself a lot of time by contacting a local beekeeping club to find dealers in your area. Buying online is an option, too. Mann Lake Ltd. has a great selection of everything you need to get started and they offer free shipping on purchases over $100 which is an easy minimum to reach when purchasing your initial hive set up.

After starting one hive, it was a very natural progression to add more bees to our lives. Now a year later we have 4 hives: the one we started last season, a split from our first hive, a new package of bees for my daughter and a small nucleus hive that was also split from our first hive. Our limiting factor is the size of our bee yard which we had to construct to help prevent the neighborhood bears from helping themselves to the honey buffet.

My hope is after reading this post that your interest in beekeeping will be perked and you may consider taking this one as a hobby for yourself. If you have heard the news about the decline of the honeybee in nature and wondering how you can help, well starting a hive is the best way to bring bees back to our gardens again.

A Little Smoked Trout

2011-07-11T06:37:00.000-07:00

While my daughter and I were at the butcher's getting our bacon sliced she noticed these lovely smoked trout behind the glass counter. I have to admit, they were really pretty to look at, golden-bronze in color and heads on still, all neatly wrapped in cellophane plastic. The only thing unattractive was the price tag: $7.49 a piece!! At most they were 14 inches long.

My daughter was looking at the trout intently then looked up at me and said "We should make some of those." God bless her! She's gone beyond asking me to actually buy stuff like that and knows that I will say "yes" to attempting to making some ourselves. She's no dummy, she knows the project would include a fishing trip, too!

We came back with 10 rather small rainbow trout and set aside the 5 largest ones for our first try at smoking trout. The Smoked Trout recipe we used was from the Bradley Recipe Site which was designed for large trout filets. Since we were smoking a small amount of whole trout we did half the amount of brine we prepared and shortened the brine time a bit. Here's what you'll need:

Ingredients

up to 2 1/2 pounds of whole, cleaned trout
2 1/2 cups cold water
1/2 kosher salt
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup cognac
1/4 cup honey
2 TBS lemon juice
1/2 of small sweet onion chopped
1 clove of garlic minced

Combine all the ingredients, mix until salt and sugar is completely dissolved. Put your trout in a ziploc bag or other non-reactive container. Pour the prepared brine over the trout making sure the fish is fully submerged. Place in the refrigerator for 10 hours turning a few times.

After 10 hours remove the fish and rinse under cold water and pat dry with a paper towel. With either tooth picks or pieces of wooden skewers to open the cavities of the fish for good air and smoke exposure. Place on a pan or cookie sheet and return to the frig for 2 hours to air dry.

Place your trout in a 135F preheated smoker. With the vent half open and water in the pan, smoke with 2 hours of cherry smoke. Alder and apple will work equally well.

After the 2 hours of smoking, increase the smoker temperature to 150F and continue cooking the trout until they reach an internal temperature of 140F. It took a cook time of approximately 6 hours of smoking and cooking to reach this temperature with our trout.

After the trout are complete, let them rest in the frig for 24 hours before eating them. It allows the flavors, especially the smoke flavor to marry and mellow. Enjoy!

Strawberries.....Finally! I'm Making a Pie.

2011-07-07T06:25:00.000-07:00

Just when I thought I had seen everything weather wise here in North Idaho, this spring was the coldest, wettest, most slowest to start we have ever seen in our 15 years of living here. Our garden has really paid the price this year. Never had I my sugar snap peas fail to germinate, they literally rotted in the ground and I had waited till May to plant them, too. Other than the radishes and lettuce the garden hasn't produced much to eat until finally this last week the June-bearing strawberries have kicked in and I was actually able to pick enough to make our favorite fresh strawberry pie: Strawberry Glace Pie.

I personally love this recipe because it's so easy and since it's so loaded with fresh strawberries you feel like you are eating something that could actually be good for you. Here's what you'll need to make one for your family:

6 cups of washed and cored fresh strawberries
8oz package of softened cream cheese ( you can use the reduced fat type, I do)
3 TBS corn starch
1 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of water
1 baked pie crust (store bought or homemade, it's all good)

Beat the 8oz of cream cheese until it's smooth and easy to spread.
Spread the cream cheese evenly in the bottom of your cooled pre-baked pie crust. Set aside.
Crush enough of the strawberries to make one cup of crushed berries.
In a small sauce pan, whisk the sugar and cornstarch together.
To the sugar and cornstarch add your 1 cup of crushed strawberries and the 1/2 cup of water. Blend together then heat over medium heat, stirring constantly. When it get to a good strong boil, let it boil for 1 minute and keep on stirring. You will feel it thicken a bit. After 1 minute of boiling, remove from the cooktop to cool.
While your strawberry sauce is cooling, arrange the remaining strawberries pointy end facing up in your pie crust on top of the cream cheese you already spread there. Depending on the size of the strawberries you may have to slice some in half to fit around the outside edges.
Once the strawberry sauce has cooled pour over your lovely strawberry arrangement to cover it completely. Place your pie in the frig for at least 3 hours to set up, the longer the better.

After chilling, your pie is ready to eat....Enjoy!

I'm NEVER Buying Bacon Again!

2011-07-02T18:47:00.000-07:00

For my birthday last month I bought myself the perfect present: Half a hog! I have purchased locker pork before but I usually have the processor make me ham, bacon and sausage from it. He does an awesome job of curing and smoking his customers' pork but I decided this time around to have him just cut it up for me and do all the curing, smoking and sausage making myself.

I have been making sausage for almost 3 years now but last year I tried my hand at curing and smoking my own ham. The butcher at our local grocery store ordered an 22 pound pork leg and sawed it to a butt and shank portion. For Easter I cured and smoked my first ham and it came out wonderful and I was sold on curing my own ham from then on out.

So, now I'm trying my hand at curing and smoking my own slab of bacon. The piece of pork belly that I'm working with came from the processor with skin removed and it weighs 5 pounds. The recipe choice is 10.5's Maple Cured Bacon from the Bradley Recipe Site.

Here's the ingredients needed:

2 oz. Kosher salt (about 1/4 cup)
2 tsp. Cure #1 (aka pink salt, InstaCure #1, Prague Powder #1)
1/4 C. Maple sugar or packed brown sugar
1/4 C. Maple syrup
5 lb. fresh pork belly
(Makes enough for a 5 lb. belly)

The prep was actually pretty easy. I mixed together the dry ingredients (salt, sugar, cure)

Then added the maple syrup to the dry ingredients to make a paste which was spread all over the piece of pork belly.

After the paste is applied, it goes into a 2 gallon ZipLoc bag (I love these big ones!) Squeeze out as much air as you can out of the bag to insure good contact with the meat. Place it in the frig to cure for 5 to 7 days, turning once a day.

After curing, the pork belly needs to be rinsed to remove excess cure. It was placed on an inverted smoker rack sitting on a cookie sheet then returned to the frig to air-dry over night. The next morning it was removed from the frig and allowed to rest on the kitchen counter for an hour and a half.

Into my preheated Bradley Smoker it goes. I smoked it with 2 hours of maple smoke at 130F with the vent opened half way. After the first 2 hours, I increased the temperature to 150-160F until the meat hit an internal temperature of 140F.

It came out just beautiful!

I planned on getting it sliced at the meat processors (since I don't own a meat slicer) but I did take a slice to fry up a sample for the family to try. It tasted as good as it looked, too.

After taking it to get it sliced. (Picture at the top) I vacuum-sealed four pounds of it.

I cannot tell you enough how easy and rewarding it was to make my own bacon. It took less time and labor than a batch of jerky takes. Go for it! And do let us know how it comes out.

So, Where Have I Been All This Time?

2011-06-30T20:46:00.000-07:00

I have been hiding in the trunk of a giant cedar tree...just kidding!

Well, I'm not exactly sure how to explain my absence from my own blog. It's my blog, I write and share my life with you in it. If you are reading my blog you are obvious kind enough to show up so I really do not have any excuse valid enough to support my reason for not writing in my own blog.

But I do apologize for not writing in over a years time. I was posting on the Bradley Smoker Forum yesterday and a member mentioned that he liked my blog and I felt so embarrassed for having not written in it for over a year. The only excuse I could come up with was that had been too busy doing the things I normally write about to write about them. Does that make a lick of sense? Not really, huh?

So, I am now going to attempt to make the time to write in my blog again. I have so many new things that I want to share with you all and I am so grateful that anyone is interested in what I love to do.

A Kreativ Blogging Award!

2010-03-13T08:09:00.000-08:00

Jeanie of Cowgirl's Country Life as so graciously awarded this blog a Kreativ Blogging Award!
Thank you Jeanie! :)
The rules for accepting this award are:

1. Post the award.
2. Thank and mention the person who gave you the award.
3. Pass the award on to seven bloggers who you think embody the spirit of the Kreativ Blogger Award.
4. Name seven things about yourself that others don’t know.
5. Don’t forget to notify the seven Kreativ Bloggers about their award and post a link to their blog.

I was hard to pick just seven bloggers because all the ones I follow are fantastic but here goes:

Small Farm Girl
3 Acre Homestead
On Ponderosa Lane
Cow Patty Surprise
The Photographic World of Swedgatch
Need for Shutter Speed
View from the Green Barn

Now what to say about myself?

My favorite fiction book is "Gone with the Wind"
I have a brindle boxer named "Bentley"
I love Dean Martin for some reason.
Even though I love to make homemade food, I'm addicted to highly processed junk like Pop Tarts, Moonpies and Oreos. :o)
I'm great at shooting moving targets but horrible at hitting something that is standing still.
"Good Fellas" is my favorite movie.
I can't swim. :(

Thinning the Flock

2010-02-27T06:41:00.001-08:00

Since we purchased our first incubator last year and started hatching chicks from eggs we were faced with the dilemma (if you want to call it that) of what to do with extra roosters we hatch. Do you give them away? Do you slaughter them? Do you collect them and go broke feeding them?

Well, if you give them away most likely your a giving someone a free chicken dinner. There's nothing wrong with this if you don't mind all the food and expense that went into the birds doing down the drain. Sometimes you know the person and you know they really want a rooster to be a companion (or stud!) for their hens. I gave away a cuckoo maran rooster to a family last year to live with the 20 Rhode Island Red pullets they had raised. They are still enjoying this rooster and their four kids just adore him. The rooster I gave away made a friend's life happier so it did not seem like money down the drain to me.

This week I had to cull a few spare roosters. I try putting it off because it does make me a little sad and the laying breed roosters are a little more difficult to process than the meat birds are. They are much more heavily feathered and because they are not broad-breasted like the Cornish crosses, they a have a narrow cavity which I find getting my big hands into a bit more difficult.

I've cleaned birds that I have hunted like waterfowl and wild turkeys dressing out a bird is not totally new to me. I do scald the chickens before I pluck them in 140F water for about a minute which makes them very easy to pluck.
The meat on these roosters is darker than your average meat chicken because of their maturity, more varied diet and the exercise they receive free-ranging. These birds are too tough for roasting or baking so I use them for stewing and make chicken with dumplings with them. They are way more flavorful than the average store-bought chicken.

So, even though it's a little bit of a pain to process them, I am rewarded with the wonder food they provide for us and my hens are grateful that they aren't being chased around by a bunch of roosters all day long.

My Iron Chef Bradley V Entry

2010-02-24T08:58:00.001-08:00

Well, I'm at it again! This is my 4th attempt at an Iron Chef Bradley online cooking competition. The Bradley Forum created this great contest for it's forum members a few times a year. There are 3 "secret ingredients" that must be incorporated into your recipe and t 80% of the cooking must be done outside: BBQ, smoker, gas grill, open fire, etc.

I posted mine yesterday and so far I'm the only entry but there will be more. I cooked mine 10 days ago so I was eager to get it posted. There are a lot of nice prizes, too, which makes me even more eager. Voting is next week so I will let you all know how I did.

Twice-Baked Winter Squash Stuffed with Smokey Beef, Roasted Red
Pepper & Cornbread Stuffing

Ingredients:

1 1/2 red bell pepper
2 winter squash ( I used Carnival squash but Acorn would work the same)
1 pound beef stew meat diced into 1/2" squares
1 medium sweet onion diced
1 6oz package of seasoned corn bread stuffing (I used Mrs. Cubbenson's)
1/2 cup pecans chopped
1/2 tsp beef bouillon
1 TBS olive oil
4 TBS salted butter divided
salt
pepper
water

Chop and toast pecans at 350F for 15 minutes or until lightly browned. I did this in the oven but the rest of the cookin' was done outside

Dice the stew meat into 1/2" chunks

Cut the squash in half and scrap out the seeds.

Cold smoke the squash and stew meat for one hour using pecan smoke.

Roast whole peppers for 20 minutes over high heat on the grill.
Once slightly blackened place in a brown bag for about 20 minutes.
Remove from the bag, peel of the skin and seed.

Dice 1 1/2 of the roasted peppers.

After the squash are cold smoked place them face down in a roasting pan.
Add enough water to the roasting pan have 1/4" in the pan.
Bake in a gas grill for 30-40 mins at 400F with the grill lid shut.

Either on the grill or side burner heat up the olive oil then saute the diced onion until browned.
Remove the onion.

After the beef is cold smoked, salt and pepper the diced beef liberally and add to the hot pan.

Cook until well-browned then add enough water to cover.
Heat to boiling then back off to a simmer and cover.
To make the meat tender it needs to simmer for 45 mins.
Add water if needed.
Once tender pour drain the meat reserving 1 cup of the liquid.

After the squash is cooked, scrape them leaving about 1/4" remaining on the skin.
Add 2 TBS of the butter and 1/2 tsp beef bouillon to the squash that was scraped out and blend well.

To the corn bread stuffing mix add the reserved liquid from the beef, 2 TBS butter.
Then add the beef, the squash mixture, the sauted onion, the diced roasted pepper and the toasted pecans to the stuffing mixture. Blend well.

Salt and pepper the squash shells then add the stuffing mixture evenly distributed to each shell.

Bake at 400F in a closed gas grill for 20 to 30 minutes or until nicely browned.

They are ready to eat! Enjoy!

The Winter That Wasn't

2010-02-20T19:38:00.000-08:00

With a technically a month of winter remaining I know I'm asking for trouble from Old Man Winter making a statement like that. In defense of my title, this winter (so far) has been the most un-winter-like we have ever experienced in our 13 years of living in North Idaho.

Our house

The last two winters were the snowiest on record for this area since they have kept records. The the year 2008 we received over 300" of the white stuff because January 2008 and December 2008 were both record breakers themselves. But weather like that here doesn't make the news like it does when it happens back East . I guess the media just expects us to deal with it or that we are used to it.

The barely frozen pond

We when walking around our property last week end. Our pond is still barely frozen but there is no snow anywhere. It's weird walking the back acreage with no snowshoes on.

Ants

Check out this ant hill we found, covered with ants, in February! Robins are out and daffodils are poking through the soil in our front yard.

Emma atop of moss

The moss on some of the rock outcroppings is so green it looks like grass. Grass is starting to sprout in the cattle pasture. I saw an elk out there last night when I tucked the chickens in for the night.

I looked at the forecast for next week and they are predicting snow for us. But right now we are enjoying highs in the low 40's. I'll keep you all posted...didn't that groundhog see his shadow?

The Silkie Saga

2010-02-15T06:38:00.000-08:00

Probably "saga" is being a little too melodramatic but it was a bittersweet experience. The sweet part is that we ended up with two beautiful silkie babies from the three eggs that did develop. Bless their little pointed heads. :)

The bitter part was that my first little pipper that I blogged about in my previous post died. He zipped around the egg successfully and just stopped moving. (That's his egg in the foreground) We tapped on the incubator after a few minutes and he still did not move. I took the egg out and he was dead. Perfectly formed with no defects visible to the eye so I'm guessing he died from exhaustion going 40 hours from pip to zip.

The two other chicks hatched with no problems and are doing well. Hopefully I'll be setting more eggs very soon. Yes, it can be a bit of an emotional roller coaster but that's just how it is when you take on the challenge of raising anything: chickens, children or tomatoes they all make me want to cry at some point. ;) But the rewards far outweigh the tears!

A Pip! Now Just Waiting For the Zip.

2010-02-12T09:15:00.000-08:00

One of our dear little silkie eggs that I blogged about last week has pipped. We came home from Emma's 4H meeting and I noticed a wee little, almost discernible crack in one of the eggs. That is what's known as a "pip".

Before we went to bed last night we were lucky enough to see the chick make the pip a bit larger while we watched. Now we are waiting on the "zip" which is when the chick pecks away the shell in a circle around the egg. The zip starts at the pip. Chicks will usually pip and rest for up to 24 hours before they start to work on the zip.

Nothing to report on the other two eggs as of yet. Hopefully this little early bird will inspire the other two to get cracking. I'll keep you all posted.:)

Reclaiming the Barn

2010-02-10T06:19:00.000-08:00

I have taken on a huge, daunting project...converting our barn back to being a barn. Yes, from the outside it does look like a barn and it does on the inside, too. But somehow we have turned our barn into a very large storage unit and a mouse housing project.

When we first purchased our place we used the barn for what it was purchased for. We housed our two goats and a guard llama in it. I could never coax any of our steers into it though, I think because of the concrete floor but I left the big door open just in case they overcame their fear.

Then in 1999 we converted the barn to a serigraph studio and printed my husband's art work. After the arrival of our daughter in 2002 we decided to contract out to have the art prints made. We sold all the printing equipment and just started using the barn for storage mostly. I did raise meat chickens in the barn and raise chicks out there but that has been about it.

We have three sheds converted to poultry houses which has worked great for our free-ranging poultry. Now I would like to have a nice place to raise some purebred chickens like the silkies that we are hatching.

Here are some pictures of the poultry housing that we have set up already.

The barn is huge and heated, too. As you can see it needs a new roof in the worst way. We are hoping to roof it with metal this year or at least purchase the material since the bottom fell out on a lot of building materials right along with real estate prices.
I'm currently going through all the stuff right now and finding things we forgot we even had. To start we are building three poultry pens in the south end of the barn. An area we actually have kept clear of stuff. I will post some interior pictures once we have those built out. It's too embarrassing to post interior pics right now :)

Go Silkies Go!

2010-02-04T18:54:00.000-08:00

As you all know I do enjoy our chickens. We have a mixed laying flock made up the of typical large fowl breeds you pick up at the local feed store. Also, we have a trio of Cuckoo Marans that are production stock which we hatched from shipped eggs last year.

This year we are trying something completely new for us. Emma has joined the poultry group of her 4H club. The leader has recommended that the kids show bantams because the smaller birds are easier for small hands to handle. We love silkies so it was easy to pick which bantam chicken breed we wanted to go with. But I wasn't having any luck finding some nice ones locally.

It's still a little chilly to ship chicks or young birds so I started looking for silkie hatching eggs. Of course I went hunting on the web for eggs and found Josh's Bantams, a breeder of lovely blue and splash bearded silkies. We purchased 16 silkie hatchings eggs.
Josh packaged the eggs wonderfully but one egg was cracked. No matter how carefully packaged, the postal service can be very hard on eggs. Even if eggs are not obviously cracked they can be exposed to extreme temperatures or just handled roughly.

We placed the 15 undamaged eggs into our Hovabator 1588. I candled the eggs at day 7 of the incubation. Three were developing but the other ones had nothing growing in them. All a testimony of just how rough their trip in the mail had been.
There's my three little silkie eggs in the incubator. Though I wished that the other eggs had fared better, I'm just as excited for these little guys as ever. If all continues to go well, they should hatch on 2/13. I'll keep you all posted!

Easy Cheesy! Let's Make Some Mozzarella!

2010-02-03T16:15:00.000-08:00

This last Christmas my friend Deb from the Bradley forum sent me a wonderful gift box containing cheesemaking supplies, a cheesemaking cookbook and a even some gifts for Emma, too. What a sweet lady! She gave me everything I need to start a new hobby and another "If I Can Do it Myself..." to share with you all.

The book is entitled Home Cheesemaking by Ricki Carroll and it is all you need to get yourself starting in making your own cheese. Ricki's recipe for 30 Minute Mozzarella is posted at the New England Cheese Making Supply Company. The cheesemaking supplies sent to me by Deb were purchased there.
Here's what you will need:

1 gallon milk (not ultra-pasteurized!) We used 2% fat milk
1 1/4 cup cool water (chlorine free)
1 1/2 tsp citric acid
1/4 tsp liquid rennet (or 1/4 of a rennet tablet)
1 tsp cheese salt

Dissolve the rennet in 1/4 cup of cool water and set aside.Dissolve the citric acid in 1 cup cool water.Pour 1 gallon of milk in a stainless steel or glass pot. (no aluminum or cast iron). Add the citric acid solution to the milk while stirring.

Heat the milk to 90F while stirring.Remove from heat then slowly stir in the rennet and water mixture. Stir with an up and down motion for 30 seconds. Then cover the pot and let it sit for 5 minutes.

Check to see if a curd has formed. It will be like custard and there will be a clear delineation between the soft solid curd and the watery whey. The whey should be pretty transparent when the curd has formed. If the curd has not separated completely the whey will still look a little milky. If this is the case let it rest for a few more minutes.Cut the curd with a knife that is long enough to reach the bottom of the pot. Slice the curd, all the way to the bottom of the pot in a checker board pattern. The cut again another checker board pattern but this time with the knife at a 45 degree angle with the surface of the curd. This will cut the curd into little chunks.Now return the pot to the stove and heat to 105F all the while gently stirring the curds with a spoon. The goal is to break the curds as little as possible. Once it reaches 105F remove it from the heat and continue to stir it gently for 2-5 minutes. The longer the time you stir, the firmer your cheese will be. I wanted a softer cheese so I only stirred for 3 minutes.Now pour off the whey that is on top. Now you should see these lovely curds at the bottom of your pot.Using a slotted spoon transfer your curds to a microwaveable bowl. Gently drain off more of the whey but do not press or squeeze it out of the curds.

Place the bowl in the microwave on "high" for 1 minute. This is when you might want to put some gloves on or if you have very clean hands that are used to handling hot stuff you can do this bare-handed.

After microwaving it take drain the last bit of whey and add the 1 tsp of cheese salt to the curds. Gently fold in the salt. Return it to the microwave cook it on "high" for another 30 seconds.

Drain the curds again and start stretching the curd. It needs to be 135F to stretch properly. If it's not at this temperature put it back in the microwave on "high" for another 30 seconds.

Stretch and pull the cheese like taffy until it is smooth with a shiny surface. The more the cheese is worked the firmer it will end up.

Form the cheese into a ball or any shape you like. A log, oval or even a braid...from what the recipe says!

Once it's shaped the way you like it, place it in a bath of ice water.Once chilled, it is ready to do what ever you wish with...like eat it!!! I was really pleased at how our cheese turned out. Though it was a low fat cheese it had a wonderful taste and texture.

We're looking forward to trying out more cheese recipes and we promise we will share it with you all!

Here's the Beef!

2010-01-26T19:42:00.000-08:00

Remember my little steers that arrived in the Spring of 2009?

Well, they grew beautifully into nicely finished animals. Their hanging weights ended up at 633lbs and 728lbs. I sold the larger one to a family and split the smaller one with another family. Every year there is something new to be learned about growing steers as big as possible in the time frame and doing it as inexpensively as possibly without compromising the quality or sustainability.

The steers are pastured here from when they arrive in the spring into early fall. Every day they are fed a little grain not only to put on weight but to also train them to come when called. I call it "Grain Train". They are not expected to be pets by any stretch but it does come in handy to have them come running when you want to check on them or when one finds a hole in the fence. Shake that bucket of grain and they usually come a running.

Our 20 acres is all pasture of varying quality with the best 5 acres surrounding the house. It is sloping and spring-fed thus stays green from spring into fall. We generally do not have to supplement this forage with hay until mid to late September.

September is when the real graining begins. This is increased every month until the first week of January when the steers are slaughter. Usually the steers are fed a good quality grass hay but this season the hay farmer I purchase from lost his lease on his grass fields and only had alfalfa available.

The great thing about cattle is that you can feed them a lower quality of hay than require for horses. I do not mean lowsy forage that was bailed into hay but good hay that may be at the bottom of the stack and be dirty or slightly moldy on one side. The only shortcomings should be cosmetic and only "skin deep". My hay supplier will generally sell this hay to me at a discount of a third off the price. This year he had beautiful second cutting alfalfa hay that he was selling for $150 a ton and let us have it for $100 a ton.

One ton of hay per steer is usually what is required to feed the animals until their January slaughter dates. Sometimes it's more sometimes less depending on when the pasture gives out.

Slaughter dates have to be made somewhat in advance depending on the time of year. I used to have the steers slaughter in November or December but now we moved it out to the first week of January. This way we are past the hunting season rush at the processors and past the crazy holiday time for us.

The "meat guys" , as my daughter calls them, are always the harshest critics of how well we did finishing the steers. They are kind of like the final exam in the school of beef raising for me and there's no way to cheat to get a better grade. (Not that I would cheat! LOL) But this year I got an A+! The steers were covered with just the right amount of fat and the meat is beautifully marbled.

I have been raising beef every year since 1997 and I think I finally have it figured out. I think! ;)

Oh, Deer!

2009-12-01T20:42:00.000-08:00

Deer season in North Idaho has come to a close and what a season it as been! It started out very slowly and ended with a bang....literally.

My husband hunted almost daily from the beginning of the season and saw a lot of bucks but mostly young spikes and forkies...even a few elk. Luckily at the peak of the rut a nice mature 9-point buck showed just long enough for him to get a good shot at it.
Not to be out done, my dad came up and got this beautiful 8 point buck with only two days left in the season. Way to go dad!
Greg removed the back straps and tenderloins from the deer. The remaining meat was taken to the local processors to be hung, cut and wrapped. We're all looking forward to next year but in the mean time we'll be enjoying all this wonderful meat. Yum!!

Do You Know How to Salsa???

2009-11-09T20:32:00.000-08:00

Well, after today I believe I now can say that I know how to make salsa. Never before had I made salsa of any kind, either fresh or canned. With all the tomatoes that I had ripening down in the basement, most of which are destined to be frozen, bagged and eventually cooked into my favorite homemade V8 juice, it seemed a shame not to make a batch of canned salsa from some fresh tomatoes. Once frozen, tomatoes become little red sacks of mush and do not lend themselves to more than juice or sauce.

The recipe I decided to try is from the Ball Blue Book and is called Spicy Tomato Salsa. I know it sounds like I'm El Cheapo (which I am!) but I decided on this recipe because a lot ingredients I already had on hand and what I had to buy for it was not expensive. Here are the ingredients:

Spicy Tomato Salsa
(makes 6 pints)

6 pounds of tomatoes, washed, drained, peeled, seeded and chopped to 1/4" dice
3 cups diced red onions
15 cloves of garlic, minced
1 1/2 cup chopped cilantro, packed tightly
6 jalapeno peppers seeded and diced
9 dried hot red chilies, seeded
3/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 TBS pickling salt
3/4 tps red pepper flakes
water

To peel the skin off the tomatoes you need to blanch them in boiling water for 1 minute and immediately plunge them into cold water. The skins will be very easy to remove.
The preparation of all the ingredients is pretty straight forward except for the 9 dried hot red chillies. Remove the seeds and place the chilies in a bowl. Add boiling water to the chilies just enough to cover them. Tightly cover over the top of the bowl with a plastic wrap such as Saran Wrap and let this steep for 15 minutes. After this, discard of approximately half of the infused water and place the remaining water, along with the chilies in a food processor and blend for a minute.
Now place all of the ingredients, along with chopped chili water mixture, in a large sauce pan or Dutch oven and heat over high heat until it comes to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally to make sure it's not scorching near the bottom. Ladle the hot salsa into hot, sterilized pint jars and fill with 1/4" head space remaining. Seal with two-piece lids.
Place in a boiling water canner and boil gently for 15 minutes. Adjust processing time you the altitude you are at.
I was please with how they turned out. After tasting a bit of the salsa before canning it, I would say it's a medium heat. I love the amount of tomato and the cilantro flavor but I am expecting a "maturing" of flavors after sitting on the shelf for a few weeks.

Green Enchiladas Stuffed with Spicy Grilled Zucchinis, Pork Sausage and Tots

2009-11-07T21:34:00.000-08:00

Here's an Iron Chef Bradley entry from the past that did get voted the winner.

Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds spicy pork sausage
2 med zucchini
10 large corn tortillas
2/3 cup chopped onion
3 TBS chopped fresh parsley
2 cups tatortots thawed and crushed
2 cups shredded Mexican cheese blend
1 large can of green enchilada sauce
1 cup sour cream
Penzeys Southwest Seasoning (salt, ancho pepper, garlic, black pepper,oregano, cayenne, cumin, chipotle, cilantro)
Canola oil

Heat up the grill to hot.
Slice zucchini lengthwise 1/4" thick.
Brush both sides with oil and season generously with Southwest Seasoning
Grill about 3-4 mins on each side.
Once cool enough to handle, chop.

Still over a hot grill.
Brown sausage in a skillet, then drain
Saute in oil the tator tots and chopped onions.

To make the filling, mix together sour cream, chopped parsley and 1 3/4 cups of the shredded cheese.
Add to this the browned sausage, sauted tots and onions and chopped grilled zucchini and mix until just blended.

Soften corn tortillas in hot oil for 5 seconds on each size.
Dip each tortilla in enchilada sauce
Then generously fill with the filling
Roll and place seam side down in a roasting pan.
Once all your enchiladas are built, pour the remaining sauce over the enchiladas and sprinkle with the remaining 1/2 cup of cheese.

Cook in a 350F preheated grill over indirect heat for 25 minutes or until bubbling.
Close the grill while cooking.

Enjoy!

Chicken Thigh Pies with Sweet Onion, Pear & Ginger

2009-11-06T21:08:00.000-08:00

At the Bradley Smoker Forum the have a contest called "The Iron Chef Bradley" competition. It's a lot of fun to be involved because it helps me think out of the box a bit more that I usually do. This was the forth competition this year and the secret ingredients were: pear, onion and chicken thighs. The requirements are that 80% of all the cooking must be done outside either in a smoker, BBQ or grill...even an open fire!

Here's my entry. When the voting finished, it ended up in second place. It was my first experience with puff pastry and I was really impressed with how easy they were to work with.
Please note that I baked them in the grill on an insulated baking pan because this was keeping with the outside cooking requirement of the contest but feel free to bake them in the oven if you do not have an insulated baking pan.

Ingredients:
3 large chicken thighs (approx 1 pound) cut in half
1 cup apple cider
6 slices regular bacon
1 TBS oil
2 tps minced ginger (divided)
1/2 large sweet onion sliced thinly (I used a Walla Walla sweet onion)
1 large pear peeled and sliced thinly
salt, pepper, and nutmeg to your taste
1 1/2 sheets of puff pastry cut into 6 squares, at room temperature for at least 40 mins.
6 oz cream cheese at room temp
1 tsp soy sauce
1 egg
1+ TBS water
Spray oil like Pam

Marinade chicken thighs 8 hrs in apple cider. Keep in the fridge while marinading.

Dry off chicken with a paper towel. Season to taste with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Wrap each piece with bacon and place on a Pam-sprayed smoker rack.
Smoke in a preheated smoker at 225F with apple smoke for 2 hours.

Have your pears, onions and 1 tsp of the ginger prepped and ready to go. Add 1 TBS of oil heating very hot in a skillet on the grill and when it starts smoking add the onions and saute till tender.
Then add pears and ginger, sprinkle with salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste. Saute for just a couple minutes and the pears are tender but not falling apart. Remove from heat.

To the cream cheese add the soy sauce and the remaining 1 tsp of minced ginger.

On a lightly-floured surface roll the puff pastry to squares of 6 inches square.
On each pastry, spread a 1/6th of the cream cheese mixture, then place a bacon-wrapped chicken piece and top with 1/6th of the sauted onions, ginger and pear mixture.

Fold over each puff pastry, moisten with a little water where the puff pastry comes in contact with itself and press down with a fork. Place on a Pam-sprayed insulated baking sheet.
Mix one egg with one TBS of water and brush on the tops of the pies. Cut slits into each pie to vent.

Place in a 400F pre-heated grill, close the grill and bake for 20 mins.
Bake until brown and bubbling.
Enjoy!

Another First:: Smoked Pork Ribs

2009-10-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd try my hand at smoking ribs using 10.5's method. Usually, I bake the ribs in the oven for 2 1/2 hours covered at 300F then finish on the grill with BBQ sauce. As usual, my husband is scared I'm going to ruin the ribs by trying something new. So, when they had pork spare ribs on sale for $1.98 a pound I bought two 5lbs racks: one for the old way and one to try 10.5's method.

I used Willingham's Rub from the Bradley Recipe Site the night before and let them marinade overnight in the fridge.

Willingham's Rub

4 Tbsp. cumin
4 Tbsp. thyme
4 Tbsp. garlic powder
4 Tbsp. black pepper -- freshly ground
2 Tbsp. cayenne pepper
2 Tbsp. salt
2 Tbsp. curry powder
1 Tbsp. onion powder
1 Tbsp. MSG or other flavor enhancer

Smoked them for 3 hrs in hickory @ 225F

Wrapped them in foil with apple juice and cooked them 2 hours longer, then applied a honey BBQ sauce.

And after an hour of cooking without the foil they came out like this.

They came out fantastic, I liked them better than the old way even. Our guest thought they won the taste test, Hubby said I made them too spicy. They were even prettier, too.

They went great with squash roasted with spices, butter and maple syrup...YUM!

Our First Smoked Salmon

2009-10-20T20:08:00.000-07:00

Our friend has been visiting us this week and he is a new Bradley owner. Thinking that I know what I'm doing ( yeah, right! ), he wanted to learn to smoke salmon. I have never smoked salmon before but what a great opportunity to try it out with a fellow Bradley Buddy!

We basically followed Kummock's method but we modified the brine a little.
For our 5 pounds of salmon we used this:

Brine
1 quart water
1 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup pickling salt
1/2 pound of brown sugar
2 TBS pickling spice

We used 3 pounds of Coho (silver) salmon and 2 pounds of Sockeye (red) salmon. The skin-on fillets were 1" thick. We made sure that they were free of bones.

We marinaded this in the fridge for 8 hours turning about every two hours. It looks nice sitting there in the Pyrex pan but I ending up putting it in a 2 gallon ziploc bag when I saw how full the pan got.

After marinading, we reaching the glazing stage. The salmon pieces were placed on smoking racks and placed in the fridge for 15 hours. I didn't know what exactly they should look like when the pellicle was formed but now I understand. They came out very glossy but not wet just sticky to the touch.

We smoked them using 2 1/2 hours of alder.

2 hours at 100F
3 hours at 140F
1 hour at 175F

They came out fantastic! The sockeye's were richer because of their higher oil content but they were both delicious. My Bradley Smoker never ceases to amaze me. I could not have imagined making a smoked salmon on my own of such high quality.

Jerky Times Three

2009-09-25T05:50:00.000-07:00

I had not done a batch of jerky for a while so I thought I'd try some new recipes that I had found. Usually I like using the jerky kits by High Mountain but I wanted to try something new and truly homemade.

My big worry with making homemade jerky is that it's going to turn out too salty. So, when I tried these recipes I alimented any added salt to the soy sauce-based recipes. I just do not see how they could use any more salt.

A 1/2 teaspoon of liquid smoke could be added to any of these recipes. I cooked mine in a smoker so I did not add any to mine. Venison or elk could be used instead of beef, too.

Teriyaki Jerky
1 cup Yoshida's cooking sauce
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground blk pepper
2 pounds of beef strips

Grandpa's Jerky
1 1/2 cup soy sauce
2 TB brown sugar
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp grated ginger
1 tsp freshly ground blk pepper
2 pounds of beef strips

Spicy Jerky
1 cup soy sauce
2 tsp hot pepper flakes
1 tsp smoked paprika
2 tsp minced fresh garlic
3 TB real maple syrup
2 pounds of beef strips

The steps are the same for each of these recipes:

You can use just about any cut of lean meat. Slice it about 1/4" thick preferably with the grain. It's easier to control your slicing if the meat is still partially frozen. Trim off any excess fat.

Make the marinade and let it rest for 20 minutes before add the meat. This give the ingredients a chance to marry. Add the meat strips to a ziploc bag then pour in the marinade. Close the bag with as little air left behind as possible. Mix the meat with the marinade and place in the fridge for 2 to 12 hours.

After marinading, I did mine at about 11 hours, place them on jerky racks lightly sprayed with Pam.

I placed mine in a preheated smoker using no water and the top vent open all the way. After the smoker's temperature recovered to 150F the smoke was applied for 3 hours. I used Bradley's Special Blend but use any type of wood that you like. I allowed the smoker to reach a temperature of about 170F and maintained it there until the meat was done.

Jerky should cook to an internal temperature of 160F to be safe. I've never tried sticking it with a thermometer though. My test is that it is flexible but there is no give when I pinch it between my fingers.

Since there is no cure used in this recipe, I store it in a ziploc bag in my freezer. Jerky has practically zero water content so it does not really freeze solid and is pretty much ready to eat right out of the freezer without having to defrost it.

Bountiful Blessings

2009-08-23T14:09:00.000-07:00

After having such a short growing season last summer, it's been such a blessing to have the garden producing so well this year.

(Almost) Free Heat

2009-08-18T10:39:00.001-07:00

Even though it's the hottest month of the year we are thinking about keeping warm. Before we know it the snow will once again fly. So, before it gets cold enough to the point we need to heat the house, we need to collect 5 to 6 cords of good firewood.

We used to purchase North Idaho Energy Logs which are like a giant version of the wood pellets one would run through a pellet stove. They were a good deal in comparison to running our electric forced-air furnace but in the last few years the price was driven up along with lumber prices during the building boom. Curiously though lumber prices have dropped the price of these logs has not.
Fortunately for us a couple years ago our neighbor had 50 acres of his land partially logged which left huge piles of downed trees that were deemed "unmarketable" by the logging company and left to be burned. Also, the logging equipment damaged some trees which eventually resulted in many "standing dead" timber. He was going to hire a crew to have all of this cleaned up and burned.

Maybe it was a little opportunistic of us but we suggested that he let us do the clean up and our pay will be the firewood we salvage. This will be our second year harvesting and in this slow economy it has been such a blessing to have access to all this firewood.

Like the title suggest, this wood heat is not exactly free. The material cost are obvious: chain saw oil, gasoline, the oil that is mixed in the fuel and this season a new chain for the saw. It is also very time consuming. Thank God we don't have to spend more than a couple minutes drive time to get there since it adjoins our property. It's takes around 4 hours to collect a 1/2 cord of cut wood if nothing goes wrong with the chainsaw

It is hard work to say the least. Greg cuts and I load the truck. Usually this involves me using a wheel barrow to get the wood to the truck so I can load it. Even Emma and Bentley are tired from playing in the woods by the time we finish a half days work.

Yes, You Can Can!

2009-08-14T06:05:00.000-07:00

I know, it sounds a little too much like Obama's campaign slogan for my comfort, too. But in this case I'm referring to canning not "hope and change". I want to make this country a better place not by redistributing the wealth but by encouraging you to try canning. With this tough economy folks are getting back to basics by trying to be more self-reliant, growing their own food and finding things to do that bring the family together without costing much money. Canning your own jam is a activity that fulfills all these things.

We first took up canning well over ten years ago. I bought a dozen Kerr half pint canning jars, read the instructions and suggested uses that came with them, got scared, and promptly placed them in the pantry and forgot about them. I start a lot of new activities that way unfortunately.

The next year though we were fortunate to have a friend that invited us to come and pick raspberries at their place as much as we wanted while they were on a two week vacation. Needless to say, we picked a lot of raspberries, gallons of them. But what to do with all of these berries? We were eating bowls of them and there are only so many pies and desserts you can make so close together in such a short time.

Suddenly I remembered the jars that I had buried in my pantry and opened them up again to read the information that came along with them. I was amazed at how simple it was to make jam. We could do this! And so can you! I'm not going to post specific recipes for canning jam because all you need to do is purchase a package of pectin (my favorite brand is Kerr) and open it up. Inside is all the recipes and step-by-step directions for making homemade jam and jellies. Ball has a great site for recipes and all their canning products.

I'm going to break down the steps in this post and give you some tips that I have learned from over a decade of canning. Here we go:

1) Prepping your jars and lids: Check the edges of your jars by carefully running your finger around the edges. If you find any chips on the edge do not use them because you may not get a proper seal or vacuum in your final product. Wash all of your jars, lids and rings thoroughly in soap and water or run it all through the dishwasher. Either way is fine. I always prepare one more jar than the recipe calls for. If you yield a little more than expected you'll have that extra jar all ready to fill.

2) Sterilizing and heating your jars and lids: The directions in your pectin box will tell you to heat your jars and lids submerged in water at 180F degrees but do not heat your lids in boiling water. You can float a candy thermometer in the water to monitor the temperature. I am using a large stock pot with a canning rack in this picture but a large Dutch oven works as well.

Your rings do not need to go in this water bath since they will not be coming in contact with the food. Keep your jars and lid in this hot water until it's time to fill them with jam or jelly.
3) Prepping your fruit and adding the pectin: Depending on the fruit, the directions will vary but do follow them. Most fruit will require either chopping or crushing and some will require the addition of lemon juice, too. You will be adding the pectin at this point if you are using a powder pectin. Stir it in. If using a liquid pectin the addition order will vary somewhat but do follow those directions that came with the pectin!
4) Cooking the fruit: In most cases the recipe will require that you heat the fruit over medium high to high heat while constantly stirring to a full boil and then add a specific amount of sugar. It is helpful to have the sugar nearby, premeasured in a container such as a bowl instead of adding it to the boiling fruit and pectin mixture cup by cup.
5) Cooking the jam: Now with the heat still on medium high to high, stir the sugar into the fruit/pectin mixture and keep stirring. To reduce the amount of foam that forms you may add a 1/2 teaspoon of butter at this time. The mixture will quickly return to a boil. Keep on stirring and time one minute. As soon as one minute is up, remove it from the heat. Skim any foam that may have formed on the surface of the jam.

One word of caution, during that minute that the jam is boiling be careful of what splatters out of the pot. I generally have on long sleeves and something on my feet. This is definitely NOT the time to any youngsters underfoot.
6) Filling the jars: Now you can start filling the jars. It is very helpful to have a canning funnel like the one pictured here. Using kitchen tongs, lift out one jar out of the hot water and fill it to a 1/4 inch from the top. Using a clean damp cloth, wipe the top of the jar so there is no residue of jam. Place the lid on top of the jar and place on the ring and hand tighten.
7) Processing the jam: Once you have all your jars filled, sealed and sitting on the kitchen counter, heat the water to boiling. After a rolling boil is achieved gently return the filled jars to the water using the kitchen tongs to lower them in. If the water level gets too high bail some of it out until the jars are covered with an inch of water. Now that all the jars are in the pot back the heat down until you have a gentle boil. Place the lid on the pot. Most recipes call for 10 minutes of processing for jams and jellies but you may need to adjust for the altitude you live at by adding time. There is a chart for this in your directions that came with the pectin.
8) You're done!: Once the processing time is completed carefully remove the jars to cool on a towel on the counter. As they cool you will hear the buttons on the top of the lids pop. This is the sound of success! After they cool completely run your finger across the buttons on the lid to make sure they are pushed in by the vacuum formed in the jar. If you have any jars with the buttons protruding on the lids, place those jars in your frig and use them first.

I do hope that everyone gives canning a try. Jam and jellies are a perfect place to start. Before you know it you will want to try pickling which really isn't any more difficult than canning jam.

Huckleberry Hounds

2009-07-13T20:05:00.001-07:00

One thing that I didn't even know existed until I moved to North Idaho was the mountain huckleberry. It's not the same huckleberry that grows east of the Rockies but is actually a wild cousin of the blueberry which also grows in the wild in addition to being domesticated. As far as I know the mountain huckleberry that grows in the western parts of North America has never been successfully cultivated to produce its fruit in commercially large scale amounts.

Huckleberries are very much part of the culture here. Even our Costco carries huckleberry jam! I have two cookbooks both written on the huckleberry and how to use them. Go to the local farmers market and a one gallon zip lock bag full of these little gems is going to set you back $30 to $40 because picking them is so labor intensive
But they do deserve the attention because they are so extraordinarily good tasting. Huckleberries are a blueberry with an attitude. They are tart and sweet at the same time and will leave you calling their domesticated cousins "blawberries"! I make batches of huckleberry jam to ship out to my family in California and though they have never tasted a huckleberry before I have no doubt in my mind that they are going to love it. It's so good that they hide it from others and ration it out!
The huckleberries that grow here in North Idaho generally occur in altitudes above 3000ft. We usually take a drive up the local forestry roads to check on their progress ripening in late June but these last two winters have had such great snow totals we have been able to wait until early July to check on them. In contrast, during hotter summers following a lighter winter, we have completely all of our picking before the 4th of July.
Of course the higher in altitude or further north you travel the later the huckleberry season begins. We have seen grizzly bears in Glacier National Park feasting on ripe huckleberries in mid-September. On the subjects of bears, it is a good idea to carry a can of bear repellent when picking huckleberries because they like them, too. Some of the best huckleberry picking we've experienced has been in grizzly country over in western Montana.
Huckleberry picking has become a tradition in this household for over a decade. I think the only season I missed was when I gave birth to my daughter the summer of 2002 and still a great neighbor was kind enough to bring us a half gallon of them. This year we added another picker to our team, Bentley, our new boxer pup who after tasting a few huckleberries began picking them off the bushes himself. I'm not too sure if that is a good thing because who needs the competition?

Sunday Morning Pancakes

2009-07-10T17:47:00.000-07:00

As with many families, Sunday morning breakfast is a much loved ritual. Sunday breakfast in our household means either pancakes, French toast or eggs with sausage or bacon. After playing around with a few pancake recipes we came up with our own healthy, hearty whole grain pancake recipe that we just love and I'm going to share it with you.

Our Pancakes
2 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 cup ground flax meal
1/4 cup toasted wheat germ
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
6 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 eggs
1/4 cup canola oil
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups milk

Mix the dry ingredients first with a whisk.
To the dry ingredients add the eggs, oil, vanilla and whisk into the dry ingredients. Slowly add the milk and whisk together until mixed but do not over-mix. Let the batter rest about 15 minutes before cooking in a greased pan or griddle over medium-high heat.
Cook until lightly-browned then turn to brown the other side. Once browned on both sides you are ready to serve and top with butter, maple syrup or whatever strikes your fancy. Enjoy!

Look! A Moose!

2009-07-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

We went huckleberry picking today in the mountains just east of Coeur d' Alene, Idaho and we were fortunate enough to see this beautiful bull moose.

Meet the Meat Chickens

2009-06-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody! I know it's been a while since my last post. We have been shopping for new puppy and it seems like all my time on the computer has been dedicated to this quest. I'm not the great multi-tasker I once was and it seems like all other interests are abandoned for a short while then soon revisited and put once again in the forefront of my mind. I think I must just be getting older.

Anyways, I wanted to share with you all my first experience raising a few meat chickens. Yes, all chickens are made of meat but the bird of choice for the poultry industry and backyard farmers is the Cornish Rock Cross. They are a hybrid of the Cornish bred to the Plymouth Rock and from what I have learned so far is that parents of these crosses are specifically bred themselves to produce the desired qualities looked for in their hybrid progeny.

The purpose of these Cornish Rock birds is to grow fast...really fast. To be a nice frier/ broiler size within 6 to 8 weeks from hatching. Along with this fast growth comes the risks of their body weight growing faster than their legs can suppose them.

I really wasn't planning on getting meat birds this year but I was thinking about it. I was especially inspired by the wonderful blog The Deliberate Agrarian . It's a great place to not only learn about raising and processing chickens but also living self-reliantly in a spiritually inspired way.

My buying three meat chickens was a little of a impulse purchase though all three cost about the same as venti mocha at Starbucks. I was at the feed store the first week of June when they had their last shipment of chicks arrive. They were all pre-sold meat chicks but in one of the brooders they had 3 big one-week old meat chicks and they were available for $1.30 a piece so I bought them. I figured it was an okay deal since they had an entire week of feed and heat lamp already invested into them.

My goal for these three birds is to raise them to roaster size which is a little larger than a frier/broiler chicken. So, I'm experimenting with allowing them to grow at a slower rate by feeding them a layer food and taking it away at night. They do have interesting personalties though. Very calm and docile birds but they seem perfectly comfortable with pooping while still laying in front of their food dish! Definitely couch potatoes!
Currently I get my friers either from Costco (already processed of course!) or from my extra roosters that are a byproduct of hatching our own heavy brown egg layers. Here's one pictured above. I slaughtered a couple yesterday that were Buff Orpington crosses. These birds are young and tender but do not have the broad breast the Cornish Rock Crosses possess. I'll probably end up slaughtering some of my Cuckcoo Marans roosters, too. They are supposed to be a good table bird and they mature a lot faster than the Buff Orpington crosses.

My New Toy, Eh, I Mean Tool

2009-05-24T06:44:00.000-07:00

Look at what I got! No, it's not a medieval torture device, it's my new LEM 5lb vertical sausage stuffer. I have finally moved up in the world with this sausage making hobby of mine. Not that I didn't like my Kitchen Aid stuffer but it was pretty slow and made stuffing even small amounts of sausage a time-consuming chore. But I do still love my grinder attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer. It works great for what I need in a grinder.

My new stuffer is so easy to use. I can load up to 5 pounds of meat in the cylinder and crank out the sausage. The first thing I made with it was smoked venison snack sticks using Nepa's snack sticks recipe. You can visit his blog: Blue Smoke and BBQ.

The snack sticks came out beautiful and delicious. I could not wait to make something else. On the Bradley Smoker Forum, Nepas also posted a Bratwurst recipe that I had to try. Using 3 pounds of ground venison to 2 pounds of ground pork, I followed the recipe and cranked out 5 pounds of "Brats" stuffed into natural hog casings. I even tried making links which was a bit of a challenge this first time around.

We grilled some of these guys up over indirect heat for 8 minutes on each side. They were wonderfully tasty and juicy. Now I'm pouring over recipes looking forward to what I'll "stuff" next. I promise I will share it with you.

A Hard Week to Be a Bird

2009-05-21T04:43:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it is because of the warmer weather or what but this last week has been a tough one for the birds that we raise on our place. We do allow our birds to truly free range during daylight hours which carries its own inherent risks of course. But to lose 4 birds in a little over a week's time is a bit of a heart break.

First off we had one of our Toulouse geese just "disappear". Usually there is some feathers or something to mark the crime scene but this time there was nothing. We came up with a theory that she may have been plucked out of the pond by either a bald eagle or great-horned owl. A couple of days later out theory was disproved right before our eyes when a coyote grabbed our other Toulouse goose and spirited it away before my husband could get his hands on a gun to get a shot at the predator.

Luckily the following morning, I just happened to look out the window to see a coyote stalking some wild ducks in our pond. My husband had no problem getting the animal this time around but when he shot it, I noticed another coyote running away in the distance. Most likely a mated pair.
Not to be outdone by the goose tragedy, I lost 2 of my chickens. One shortly after the first goose disappeared. This time around there was the telltale signs of the abduction...a pile of buff-colored feathers. It was one of my younger pullets that I had hatched on my incubator test run.

A few days after the coyote was dispatched I lost one of my precious cuckcoo marans that I hatched from eggs that I had shipped from Ohio. Oh, and did I mention is was one of only three pullets that I got from my twelve eggs? This time it was the neighbor's dog who was the perp. It was strange because this dog has come here before and showed zero interest in the birds running around. But being that the marans are so young I think they made an easy, irresistable target.

Can't blame the dog or my neighbor too much. The dog was being a dog and the chicken was being an easy meal. The dog brought the chicken home and my neighbor called saying he thought his dog killed one of my birds. I appreciate his honesty, some folks would not have called us and he paid me what the birds go for on Craigs List.

Here's the Beef! All Two of Them!

2009-05-11T17:15:00.001-07:00

In my former life as a Californian there is one thing that I never would have guessed I'd be doing in a million years and that is raising my own beef cattle. I do not fancy myself has a true rancher of beef because I only raise 2 or 3 steers a year. We raise one for ourselves that we usually end up splitting with friends or family. The other ones are sold to friends , too.

We purchased our first heifer out of necessity right after we purchased our home here in North Idaho. Our property taxes are reduced if we have some sort of consumable livestock grazing on it. So, we could raise cattle, sheep, pigs or goats to have our place designated as "dry grazing" land.

At first we thought we wanted to breed our own beef cattle and purchased a hereford heifer from a local rancher. Part of the purchase price included a breeding back to his angus bull. After we had her for a few months he picked her up and pastured her with his herd. She was returned to us pregnant and the next spring gave birth to a baldy bull calf that we castrated ourselves. We raised that baldy steer and he was our first home raised beef.
We leased a beautiful hereford bull in trade for pasture when our hereford cow was ready to breed again. The bull stayed with us the entire summer and we thought for sure we would be raising a new calf the following spring. Unfortunately, our cow did not get pregnant and we had an entire summer with no beef calf to raise for ourselves.
So, this is when we changed our plan: Instead of breeding our own beef, we would sell our cow and purchase beef steers in the spring and slaughter early in the winter after the big fall rush at the meat processors. This has worked out well for us and it makes most of winter easier by not having to worry about feeding any livestock during the coldest monthes.
We have been blessed to meet a wonderful neighbor and his family that raise locker beef and pork for a living. Mike has become our supplier of steers and he has made purchasing them so much easier by shopping the auctions and picking out reasonably priced animals for us that have a gentle temperment and are not too flighty.
Also, we have a few loyal customers that purchase these animals from us at the end of the season. Last year, we raised 3 steers and kept one for ourselves. We are only a family of 3 so one steer that has a hanging weight of 600lbs can last us a couple of years or more quite easily. So, these two new steers will be sold to other families in January.

Raising your own beef is truly fun and satisfying. It's wonderful to have animals that can take acres of grass and turn it into food for your family. We do not have to buy hay until almost October if it is not too dry out to keep the grass alive. And with the cost of hay and grain this year it's nice to have to buy hay only for the last three months of the time that we are raising the steers.

A Different Kind of Hunt

2009-05-09T10:06:00.001-07:00

During the last week of April to about mid-May, depending on the altitude, is prime morel mushroom hunting time in North Idaho. We get so excited about morel season. If you're a mushroomer too, you are probably out there right now walking around in the woods scanning the ground for these little treasures.

We do most of our morel hunting on our 20 acres and our neighbor's adjacent 60 acres. We do have some favorite local public hunting grounds, too. But of course they are a secret! Here's my hubby and daughter after being caught "poaching" morels from our neighbors acreage last night. Actually we all jumped into the Kubota and he drove us to another great picking site on his land. What a great neighbor!
We get to see a lot of nature when we are out scouring the land for morels. Some of the flowers that are out at the same time are triliums, dog-tooth lilies, shooting stars and lady slipper orchids.
Another type of mushroom that we like to pick in the spring are coral mushrooms. They look a lot like a cauliflower and it's easy to harvest literally pounds of coral mushrooms if you find a good area for them. They are big and much easier to see that morels. Can you spot the morels in this picture? Sneaky little buggers!
Here's what we ended up harvesting last evening and we will be going out again tonight to see if we can find more. In a later post I will share my Cream of Morel Soup recipe but for now I will recommend slicing some morels rolling the slices in a little flour, salt and pepper then frying them in melted butter...YUM!
But remember, never ever eat any wild mushroom that you have deemed edible just from identifying from a picture in a book or on the internet! You need a knowledgeable living, breathing human being that has harvested mushrooms for a while to take you out mushroom hunting and show you what is safe to harvest and eat. I took classes at the local community college that included field trips where the instructor showed us what was safe in our local forest.

Jalapeno + Cheddar + Deer + Smoke = Yum!

2009-05-04T13:45:00.000-07:00

I got a chance to smoke up a batch of our favorite deer sausage last weekend...Smoked Jalapeno Cheddar Deer Sausage. This sausage I hold near and dear to my heart because in my quest to learn how to make it I stumbled upon the Bradley Smoker Forum where I not only learned how to smoke sausage and meat but also met a group of some of the nicest folks in the world. I highly recommend the forum to anyone interested in smoking their own food if you own a Bradley smoker or not. There is an incredible wealth of knowledge to be found there.

This a great recipe that I guess could probably be used with elk or beef, too. The venison that I work with is already ground with 15% beef suet when I receive it from the processor. Since the recipe calls for 3 pounds of ground venison make any additions of fat to it before you weigh out the 3 pounds.

I have used both the 38mm edible collagen casings and the natural hog casings. They both work well but prefer the natural hog casing because they are less likely to tear if you accidentally over stuff them. Also, they make a nicer finished product by adhering to the sausage contents when cooked. The collagen casing are edible but they tend not to stick to sausage during the cooking process and you instinctively want to peel them off when you eat the sausage. I do not have this result when making snack sticks using the 19mm collagen casings but I'm not sure why this is the case because I am buying both sizes of the collagen casings from the same source. Maybe someone who knows the reason can post it in the "comments" section at the bottom of this post.
Ingredients:
3 pounds of ground venson already mixed with fat
1 cup of distilled water
3 TBS of Morton Tender Quick, (make sure to level each tablespoon but do not pack it)
3 finely diced large jalapeno chiles
1/2 tsp of garlic powder
1 tsp freshly ground pepper
2 tsp of whole yellow mustard seeds
1 1/2 cup cheddar cheese at about a 1/4" dice
6 to 7 feet of hog casings or 38mm collagen casings

I purchase a product called high melt temperature cheese which can be found at meat processing supply companies like Butcher & Packers. You can use regular cheese from the local grocery store but some of it will melt into the meat due to the temperatures reached during the cooking process. The high melt temperature cheese is wonderful to work with because it will keep its form during the entire process and it is lovely to see all the chunks of cheese in each slice of the sausage.

If you are using natural hog casings soak them for about an hour in cold water and set aside while you make your sausage mixture. In a large mixing bowl place the Morton Tender Quick, garlic powder, yellow mustard seeds, ground pepper and distilled water. Stir this mixture until the Morton Tender Quick dissolves completely. Once the Morton Tender Quick is completely dissolved you are ready to add the meat, cheese and diced jalapenos. Mix this very thoroughly in a big mixer or with your hands (preferably wearing disposable gloves).
Now you are ready to stuff the sausages. Rinse out the hog casings well after soaking and use whatever stuffing device you prefer, you can see my Kitchen Aid Mixer setup at the top of this post. I personally like to have some pre-cut butcher twine at the ready before I get my hands into stuffing.
Stuff to the lengths that you want and whatever fits your smoker best. I have a 4-shelf Bradley smoker and if I am smoking the sausages on the rack I usually make the sausages 16" to 18" in length. Once stuffed place them on a cookie sheet uncovered in the fridge overnight to cure.
The next morning, preheat the smoker to 130F and place the sausages in the smoker. Let the sausages sit at this temperature (with no smoke) for an hour or until the casings are dry to the touch. Once dry bring the temperature up to 165-170F and apply smoke for 2 to 4 hours depending on taste, I apply 3 hours of hickory smoke to mine. Leave in the smoker until the sausage reaches an internal temperature of 160F. Be careful not to let the smoker get above 170F or the fat will start to render out of the sausages. Once they reach the desired temperature, shock them in a large pot of ice-cold water. Now they are ready to eat and enjoy.

Signs of Spring in North Idaho

2009-05-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

After the last two longer-than-normal winters we have experienced here, it does not take one long to really appreciate the first signs of spring. The woods come alive with the thumping of ruffed grouse, the crowing of pheasants and the gobbling of turkeys. The chipmunks reappear from their long hibernation searching and scurrying about on the ground looking for food.

For us humans it's time to start planning our veggie garden, mend fences for the arrival of our beef steers and one of my favorite spring diversions, morel hunting. We found some of our first morels of the season just last weekend. Coral mushrooms come out during the second half of morel season and will post some picture of those then we find one.
I have to admit that I am running a little behind on the veggie garden but the weather is so cool this spring I think it will be okay. We will be planting this weekend sugar snap peas and lettuce. I have started my tomato plants on the first day of spring and they seem so tiny compared to the ones I see at the stores which are available right now. I seem to always cave in and buy a couple tomato plants because mine seem so small by the time I plant them the first week of June. But the funny thing is that small they may be the always end up as big as the store bought plants and produce more. I'm going to stay strong this year and resist the urge to buy any tomato plants. I have 20 started plants right now all along our south-facing window sills. Hopefully seeing the big trees out there will inspire them to grow big!

A One Pound Plus Moskvich

My two favorite types to grow here are Moskvich which is a Siberian beefsteak type hybrid and Red Agate which is a determinate saucing variety. I plant a lot of the other favorites, too, like Sungolds and Brandywines which also produce well during our short season.

Emma with a Red Agate

All the tomatos pictures on this post are from our 2007 season. We had tomatos last year but only few fully ripened to color in the garden and a majority of them had to be bagged until ripe. I attended the North Idaho Fair that year and did not see one red tomato! It made me feel so much better to see the blue ribbon winners were big green tomatos. Not that misery enjoys company but I figured if these folks that really know what they are doing still have green tomatos in August then I must not be too much of a failure after all!

Mega Tom and Micro Jake

2009-04-28T18:45:00.000-07:00

My dad and mom came up for turkey season this month. We had a great visit and my dad had wonderful hunting success! I had success too, but on a MUCH smaller scale.

Our area has a high turkey population. High enough for Idaho Fish and Game to issue depredation permits for out particular game unit. All during the winter the turkeys hang around our chickens stealing their food but when their mating season begins in early spring the jakes and toms disband from the mixed group and cruise around the forest looking for hens.

The tom that my dad got weighed 23 pounds and had a beard that was almost 10 inches long. When he was dressed out he hit 18 pounds on the scale. We did not know the significance of his weight until my husband checked it out on the computer. This was a big turkey that could of ranked high in the Idaho records if we had him officially weighed before preparing him for the table.

I cooked him the same way I do a domesticated bird and he came out wonderfully moist and tender. The only thing that I would say was "tough" were the drumsticks but those legs had to carry a lot of weight probably a mile or so each day so we will forgive the big guy for that. I cook all turkeys covered until the last 30 minutes to brown the skin. The internal temperature reached 170F. A few years back we shot a couple of jakes that cooked up beautifully and suspected that the older toms would not be nearly as tender but this big tom did not disappoint!

Now my little turkey was the polar opposite of my dad's mega tom! When I shot my jake he tumbled into a nearby spring and got himself soaked so he wasn't a very pretty picture when my husband photographed him. He was in a group with 3 other jakes and he had the longest beard (4 inches) in the group so I thought he would be of decent size. Boy, was I wrong! I easily picked him up with one arm he was so little. I didn't weigh him before I cleaned him because he was so wet and dirty I didn't want to put him on my scale. When he was all dressed out he only weighed 9 1/2 pounds.

He's going to make a great eating bird to be sure. Almost all of the bird shot was concentrated on his head and he had only two body shots: one in the neck and one in his back between his wings. Because of his youth he was extremely easy to pick, too. He's in the freezer right now while I decide if I want to bake him or put him in the Bradley smoker.

I purchased a second turkey tag that I can start using beginning May 1st. Maybe I'll have another hunting story to share soon. Wish me luck!

Planting Fruit Trees...At Last!

2009-04-08T05:37:00.000-07:00

Boy does time go by fast! We have owned our place in Northern Idaho for 12 years now and have never planted a fruit tree. Oh, we've talked about it many times but just never acted upon it. It just seemed kind of daunting to try to figure out what and where to plant. Also, we haven't had the greatest of luck on the few trees that we tried planting here due to the depredations of mice, gophers and deer.

Our home came with three fruit trees: a greenish/yellow apple of some sort that we thought might be a Granny Smith, a tiny plum tree that makes tiny plums and an apricot tree that bloomed so early that it generally got its blossoms froze off. The apple tree usually makes enough fruit some seasons to make a few pies and a batch apple butter.This year, with the encouragement of my brother-in-law Doug, we decided that none of us were getting any younger and it was silly to keep putting off planting fruit trees. Most fruit trees will take at least 2 years to be mature enough to produce any fruit so that even delays the wait for your reward even longer.
We ordered four trees from Stark Brothers: a Honeycrisp semi-dwarf apple tree, a Jonathon dwarf apple tree, an Intrepid standard peach tree and a Harglow standard apricot tree. Honeycrisp is our favorite apple and the Jonathon is a baking apple that blossoms at the same time so they can pollenate each other.
The apricot and peach trees were both described as late blooming varieties which will hopefully work well here. We are at USDA Zone 6 so our winters are not that cold compared to most northern states. But the springs here take a long time to get rolling. It is normal to experience frosty nights here well into the first week of June. I don't dare put our tomato plants in the garden until June.
The sight we picked for our "orchard" was the backyard. It slopes downhill towards the west and to the east is our house which we hope will help divert cold air around it as it travels downhill. The slope continues past the border of the backyard so there is no risk of cold air pooling there either.
Since these trees were bare root we soaked them in water for about 4 hours before planting. Each hole was dug about 2 feet wide and a 1 1/2 feet deep. We mixed the soil from each hole with Eco Organic Compost (1 part compost to 2 parts soil) and 6 TBS of Vigoro Timed-Release All-Purpose Plant Food which feeds up to 6 months. I never use non-organic fertilizers on my vegetables or raspberries but we made the exception this time because we wanted a time-released product to help get these trees well-established. The fertilizer will surely be gone by the time these trees produce fruit...I hope!
To address all of our predation problems we put a layer of defenses (or should I say fences!) around each tree. Before we back filled the the holes, we surrounded them with 2 foot wide hardware cloth to hopefully prevent an attack from the gophers. Then we cut the tops and bottoms off of 2 liter Coke bottles and wrapped the remaining part of the bottle around the base of each tree to deter mice from chewing on the trees at their base. To keep the deer and Greg's geese from nibbling the trees we placed a cylinder of welded 5 foot wire farm fence around each tree. These were stabllized by T post, too.
I'll keep everyone posted on how these trees do. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they make it!

What All the Well-dressed Chickens are Wearing.

2009-04-07T07:43:00.000-07:00

From the first batch of chicks that we hatched, Emma has picked out her favorite. It's a little blonde pullet that she has named "Cooner" because she has a beard like an Ameracuna chicken. Actually she is a cross between a Buff Orpington rooster and an Easter Egger hen.

Emma has been bringing Cooner into the house and dressing her up and the chicken seems to tolerate it, too. At first I started to worry if the bird was maybe sick or something and I told Emma to stop bringing her in but after a few days I noticed nothing wrong with her. She's just a laid back chicken!

Want More Room in Your Freezer? Bake a Pie!!

2009-04-06T16:45:00.000-07:00

Well, it's attempting to be Spring here. This is when I look in the freezer and say to myself "We have got to use up some of these things up!" We grow a lot of strawberries and raspberries and there were still about 3 gallons of 2008 raspberries in our freezer. So, I decided to bake myself a raspberry pie.

I took a rhubarb pie recipe that I just love and switched the filling on it to one of raspberries. One reason I like this recipe is that it is a little lower on the fat being a one-crust pie. Also, it uses a no-roll pie crust where canola oil is used instead of shortening. But believe me this is no Weight Watchers recipe by any stretch! Here's what you'll need:

Crusty Raspberry Pie

No-Roll Pie Crust:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 Tbs sugar
1/2 cup canola oil(or other vegetable oil)
2 Tbs milk

Filling:
4 cups raspberries (fresh or defrosted frozen berries)
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
5 Tbs Clear Jell or 1/3 cup flour
2 Tbs chilled butter cut into pieces

Topping:
1/4 cup chilled butter, cut into pieces
1/4 sugar
1/2 cup flour

Preheat oven to 350F.

To make the crust, mix flour with salt and sugar then pour in oil and milk. You can mix it with well with a fork or put it in a food processor and give it a few pulses until it is crumbly in texture.

Transfer the mixture to a deep-dish pie pan and press with your fingers to spread it over the bottom and up the sides of the pan.

In a large bowl, mix the sugar, cinnamon and Clear Jel (or flour) together. Add the berries and gently toss to cover with the sugar mixture. Pour this into the prepared pie crust. Dot with the butter pieces.To make the topping, mix the butter, sugar and flour with a pastry blender until crumbly or place it in the food processor and give it a few pulses until crumbly. Sprinkle over the berry mixture.

Place your pie in the oven and bake for one hour or until the filling is bubbling and the topping is browned. It's great topped with ice cream or whipped cream. Enjoy!

They Hatched...And I Learned Something.

2009-03-25T13:11:00.000-07:00

Our collection of Cuckcoo Marans and homegrown mutts finished hatching today. It was a long "labor" which started with our first pip early the morning of March 23rd and ended kind of sadly this morning.

As I blogged before, we started out with 12 Cuckcoo Marans shipped from Ohio and 12 eggs from our own chickens. I did a final candling of the eggs on day 18 which gave the questionable eggs a chance to developed into something if they were in fact any good. We had 8 of our own eggs and 9 of the Marans eggs that definitely had growing, moving chicks in them.

From day 18 of the incubation to the actual end of the hatch, which is usually around day 21, the most important rule above any is: Do not open the incubator under any circumstances! Humidity plays such a critical role during incubation but even more so during the final days leading to and during the hatch. By opening the incubator during this time you can cause drastic drops in the humidity which endanger the chicks that are yet to hatch. The drier air can quickly wick the moisture out of the eggs' membrane and make them too tough for the chicks to pierce with their beaks and/or literally shrink wrap them in the membrane. Either way they will not be able to hatch and ultimately die in the egg.

Everyone has their "favorite" humidity that they like to incubate their eggs at. They arrive at this magic number through a lot of experimentation and experience. The optimal humidity for the incubator is affected by many environmental factors too such as the altitude, humidity of the house and ventilation rate of the incubator.

Our first hatch in our Hovabator 1588 was very successful and I planned on doing all of the conditions the same on this hatch, too. For days 1-17 the relative humidity was 40-50% and for days 18 to the end of the hatch the range was 60-70%. During the first hatch we had some very short-lived spikes in humidity each time a chick emerged from its egg but this was easily managed by taking the ventilation plug off the incubator for 30 minutes or so to get it back to the desired humidity range.

On this hatch I had no idea that high humidity would be a problem. We had more eggs in the incubator this time and of course more eggs means more chicks hatching. The hatch started very slowly on the 20th day of incubation with a single pip on one of the Marans eggs. This chick hatched and then another later in the evening. It was easy to manage the humidity in the desired range.
There was a point in the middle of this hatch when so many chicks hatched at once that the humidity spiked at nearly 80%. It did not worry me much because I thought low humidity during the hatch was the big danger. I opened the plug on the incubator and it took well over an hour to recover itself back down to 70%. We still had 4 eggs left to hatch 3 of which were pipped by the chicks. One still had not pipped.

The fourth to the last egg to hatch made its way cracking around the egg very slowly and seemed like it could not lift the top of the egg off. It cheeped and cheeped and seemed trapped in the egg even though it had cracked a complete circle all around it. We were perplexed..what was wrong?

I was deathly afraid of opening the incubator (remember the rule!) so we rigged this thick copper wire with a bend in the end of it and ran it through the vent hole in the lid of the incubator to help this chick out of the egg. Luckily we were able to get the egg shell off the little guy's head and scoop the chick out of the egg. The chick was unusually wet and there was about a tablespoon of fluid left in the bottom of the egg. It was also so exhausted from it's ordeal that it was just flopping around and kicking with it's eyes still shut. We thought that it must be deformed somehow. We didn't put two and two together that this chick's egg was so full fluid due to the high humidity that occurred a few hours ago. That was the last egg to hatch on day 21 of incubation.
The next morning the chick that we thought was malformed somehow was just fine walking around and hanging out with his mates. That made us scratch our heads...what was his problem and how did he recover from it? We still had three eggs left: two were pipped and still one was a "no show". The two pipped eggs started to crack and again one of the chicks got stuck in the egg even though it was cracked all the way around. I grabbed my trusty copper wire rescuer and was able to remove the top of the egg from this chick but it was still stuck in the shell. I couldn't get it out without harming it. So, we figured we had one chick that hadn't pip and one that was almost done cracking it's egg, it was worth rescuing this stuck chick. Oh, yes it was one of my Marans chicks, too!

We soaked a washcloth in very warm water, opened the incubator and laid the warm washcloth on the unhatched eggs and removed the egg with the stuck chick. It was just like the other stuck chick, very wet and exhausted to the point you thought it was sick or malformed in some way. We returned it to the incubator and it flopped around for a couple hours before it opened it's eyes and got its legs under it.

The last chick needed assistance hatching also but for just the opposite reason. It was stuck in its membrane because it instantly dried around the chick because we opened the incubator to rescue the wet chick! The wet towel was not enough to keep that egg moist. This chick was like a normal chick though. It had it's eyes open and started walking pretty shortly after hatching.

The final egg never hatched so I performed an "eggtopsy" on it and found a fully developed dead chick in it. This little guy was also a victim of the high humidity that occurred earlier. It was apparent that he had pipped the air cell, which all chicks do before they pip the shell, but was met by a gush of fluid that drowned him. It was a sad ending to an overall successful hatch. We had eight out the Marans and eight out of our eggs hatch.

The folks at the Backyard Chicken Forum were helpful in solving what seemed like a mystery to me. The humidity spike was just too high for too long. But I have leaned from all of this : to be much more careful about letting the humidity rise too high. Some have recommended a range of 60-65%. Also, I think I will go back to hatching just one dozen at a time....for now!

Chicken Update

2009-03-12T09:43:00.000-07:00

I apologize for not making a post for over a week but my new hobby has taken up all of my time lately. What may this new hobby be you may ask? It's called being sick! I have had the worst bout with illness for the last week that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies. It's started with the flu almost three weeks ago and ended up with a bevy of secondary infections including sinus and conjunctivitis in both eyes.

But enough about me, I want to give an update about my chicken hatching hobby. The ones that I hatched a little over a month are huge and way too big to be inside but it's way too cold to move them outside to the chicken coop. So, we have them in the basement in a big galvanized trough until it warms up enough.
They are a mellow group of babies. Their daddy is our buff orpington rooster, John who is a mellow fellow himself.

Now for an update on the incubating eggs. I candled them on day 7. Candling is a method of holding an egg in front of a focused bright light to see what's going on inside. I used a bright small flash light and hold it to the top of the egg. It works pretty good but I'm also very new at this. So, I'm not always 100% certain at what I am seeing at this early stage. Especially with the dark marans eggs which are much harder for me to understand what I'm seeing.

Here's a tally for the 24 eggs that we started incubating on 3/3/09:

4 eggs have been culled, 2 due to infertility and 2 were what we call "quitters." They stop developing in their first week of development for unknown reasons, possibly bacterial infection.

17 eggs (8 cuckoo marans & 9 from our own flock) look like they have developing embryos. The little buggers actually move a bit...it's really exciting to see them!

3 of the cuckoo marans eggs I'm giving a big"?" because I do believe that I am not seeing any chicks in them but they are too dark for me to be certain.

I crack my eggs into a cup when I cull them to see if there is any development and to reaffirm that I made the correct assessment. I haven't been wrong in my short career as an egg candler but I am so afraid that I might make a bad call on these dark eggs and kill an embryo that was developing. I'm going to give them a day or two more before I decide to cull or not. It's a double-edged sword because with the inside of the incubator at 99.5F you could either be growing a chick or one heck of a stink bomb! If a rotten egg explodes and splatters on the good eggs they could become damaged by any bacteria or toxins from the bad egg. It's not a good thing.

I'll have to get off the fence at one point! I will keep everyone posted on the three "?" eggs.
To be continued....

The Cuckoos Are Coming....I Hope!

2009-03-03T08:53:00.000-08:00

Look what I got in the mail last Monday! A dozen Cuckoo Marans eggs from Meyers Hatchery in Ohio. They shipped them out Friday and they arrived here in Idaho on Monday. They packed them beautifully in foam and not one broke. I candled them to check for cracks or damaged air cells and they looked really good.

After resting over night they went into the incubator this morning with a dozen eggs from my own chickens that I collected over the weekend. My good friend Rachael wants a rooster and some hens so we are going to "cook" her up a bunch. We'll end up with some spare roosters, luckily they are edible!
I had such good results with our first hatch I'm going to do everything exactly the same this time around. With shipped eggs it's always a gamble because you have no idea what they have been exposed to along the way....rough handling, dropping or temperature extremes. So, we will keep our fingers crossed that some of the Cuckcoo Marans will hatch. I'll be candling the eggs and checking for development on day 7 of the incubation process.

To be continued......

Jerky: the Easiest Way to Look Like a Pro

2009-03-01T18:36:00.000-08:00

This last weekend I wanted to make something in the smoker that was really easy. Emma and I were just getting over a bad case of the flu and poor Greg was in the middle of it. So, to get the satisfying feeling of accomplishing something but not having to spend a ton of time in the preparation of it, I decided to make jerky from a Hi Mountain jerky kit. I highly recommend these kits that are available at sporting good stores and online. The variety flavors are great and directions clear and easy to follow. They work for whole meat jerky and ground meat jerky with two separate directions for both versions.

I'm not going to give all the details because one needs to follow the Hi Mountain 's directions for success but I'll share some pics of what my batch looked like at various stages of preparation. I started with 3+ pounds of venison roast. Hi Mountain's Original Blend is the flavor I used this time around.

I cut the venison into 1/4 inch thick slices. It is much easier to slice it when the meat is still partially frozen. Remove any fat, sinew or silvery membrane from the meat.

After trimming and slicing your meat make sure you weight it. This is how you accurately figure out how much season and cure you need to mix up from your kit. I love using my digital kitchen scale.
The slices need to be patted dry with a paper towel. Place the slices flat on a cookie sheet and sprinkle with the season-cure mixture evenly on both sides.

Once you are done covering the meat with the mixture, put it in a big bowl and mix it up to get the seasons and cure evenly distributed.
Now the seasoned and cure-added meat needs to cure for 24 hours in the fridge. After 24 hours it is ready to place on jerky racks and place into the smoker.

I cooked the jerky at 200F and applied an hour and a half of smoke during the first part of the cooking process. I used Bradley's Special Blend bisquettes since I recently received a variety pack from Bradley and had not tried the blend before. The entire cooking process took about 3 hours.

I'm not exactly sure how to take the internal temperature on a piece of jerky so I just check for doneness by touch. It should be dried but still flexible enough to bend without breaking. Also, there should not be much give when you squeeze it between your fingertips.

When cooked let it rest on the kitchen counter until cool. Then place it in a zip lock bag in the fridge. This will allow the jerky to release a little moisture to its surface and give it a beautiful glossy finish. Now you will have some great jerky that tastes and looks like a pro made it.

Freak Gasoline Fight Accident

2009-02-25T11:30:00.001-08:00

I know this is pretty silly but sometimes a little bit of silly is exactly what we need!

Apple Butter Time!

2009-02-23T15:46:00.000-08:00

I realize that for most folks apples are more a symbol of autumn than the last month of winter. But for me apple butter time is now.

Every fall we go to an apple growing region just across the state line in Washington called Green Bluff. We usually come back with big crates of Granny Smiths and Honey Crisps. And we never head home without buying a dozen pumpkin donuts, too...yummy!

From October on we eat these wonderful apples and make tons of pie until we get to the point of being slightly burnt out on apples. But there's always some apples that are left and we kind of forget about them since they are stored in the basement. This usually happens around February or March. I made a batch of apple butter this last weekend and this is how I did it....

What you'll need:
4 quarts of sweet apple cider
3 quarts of pared apple chunks....about 4lbs of apples
2 cups of sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
6-7 half pint canning jars with lids

Heat the 4 quarts of apple cider to boil and then back it off to a simmer. Simmer uncovered so it can reduce. You want this to reduce down to 2 quarts which will take approximately 1 1/4 hours.

We like to use our apple slicer/corer to prepare the apples. Emma loves helping me on this part.

Now we have 3 quarts of apple chunks and a tub of skins and cores to feed to the chickens.

Once the cider is cooked down to 2 quarts we are going to add our ginger, cinnamon and cloves to it. And we are going to add our apple chunks in there, too.

Bring the mixture to boiling then back off to a simmer. Cook uncovered until the apples are soft and can be broken with a spoon. This will take about an hour. If you want a smoother texture to your apple butter, run the cooked apples through a food mill but it is optional.

Once you arrive at the texture you want add the 2 cups of sugar. Stir it in and heat it to boiling. Back off to a simmer.

Simmer this uncovered and stir frequently. In the mean time get your boiling water canner heated up to 180F. Your lids and jars need to reach this temperature to insure food safety. But do not allow the water to reach a boil because this is not good for the seals on the lids. We want our lids to experience boiling temperatures only once and that is during the finally processing.
We want to cook down the apple butter for about 2 hours. To test if the apple butter is ready to put into the jars you will place a spoonful of it on a plate, tilt the plate and if no liquid separates from the pulp it is ready.
Fill the jars, leaving 1/4 inch head space. Wipe the rims of the jars with a damp cloth and place the lids on the jars. Seal with rings and processing in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes. Add 5 mins of processing time for each 1000 feet above 1500 feet. I live at 2500 feet above sea level so I process my jars for 15 minutes.
Take the jars out of the canner and cool. Check the tops of the lids to be certain that you have good seals. Now you have apple pie in a jar to spread on your morning toast! Enjoy!

The Turkey Men

2009-02-21T10:10:00.000-08:00

The turkeys came a calling today. I call them "the Turkey Men" because more often than not it's the toms that show up for food. We're getting more girls in the mix though. To be politically correct maybe I should call them "the Turkey People."

The Wiggles - Olive Oil

2009-02-19T18:26:00.001-08:00

I couldn't have expressed my love for olive oil better myself!

Smoke Therapy Part II

2009-02-18T09:18:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry I left off with a compilation of my smoking disasters but there is a happy ending to this story. One problem that I often suffer from is an inability to see the forests from the trees. I get so wrapped up in the little things I fail to see the big picture and this is why I wasn't "getting it" when it came to smoking meat. The beauty of the Bradley Smoker is the control it provides for both the temperature and the amount of smoke to apply. But I wasn't separating out those two concepts in my mind. I was just cranking up the heat and smokin' the crap out of everything I put in it.

When my husband and I both harvested deer in November of 2008 we removed the tenderloins and back straps from both deer and had the processor package boneless roast that I could cut jerky from and the rest was ground with 15% beef suet. Even though I was far from mastering the art of smoking we were not going to spend the money to have the deer made into our favorite treats including our very favorite smoked jalapeno cheddar sausage. This is a favorite of most our local deer hunting friends. Our neighbors had an entire deer processed just into this sausage and it was about $250 to do it.

It was my mission to convert all of this beautiful vension into wonderful things to eat. We purchased casings from Cabelas and I searched online to find a jalapeno cheddar recipe for venison. I also went back to the official Bradley Smoker site for more information and noticed they had a forum for Bradley customers. I found one recipe online that looked good but it was for an oven application not a smoker. I wasn't sure how to use this recipe with my smoker so I posted the recipe on the Bradley forum and asked for help converting this to a smoker recipe.

I was amazed at the help I received. I have tried some forums on different areas of interest in the past and never liked the feeling I got from some of its members. Always felt like their goal was to "set you straight" more than to help and guide the newby. Not so at the Bradley Smoker Forum. These were the nicest, most helpful group of folks in the world. They gave me exact step by step instructions seasoned with tips and encouragement. I even learned you don't need to have the smoke going the entire time of the process!

I followed their directions and came out with jalapeno cheddar sausage that rivaled the stuff from the processor and this was my first try! I posted pics of the results on the forum and received the greatest compliments. I know this may sound funny but that was it for me, I was hooked on smoking and the forum from that moment on. How can you beat having a new hobby that helps feed the family and a circle of friends that are as excited about it as you are. I never thought I'd be taking before and after pictures of sausage and jerky but now it's just another fun part of it. Greg will even ask me "Did you get a picture of these?" before he tastes something that just came out of the smoker.

Now I'm either smoking or sometimes canning something nearly every weekend during these colder months. Being a substitute teacher can be tough at times and I find it so therapeutic to be planning and looking forward to what's going to be put into the smoker or canner that up coming weekend. Also, I'm branching out into making fresh sausage which we used to pay the processor to make for us and the breakfast sausage we make from our venison is actually better than the sausage we had them make for us.

Smoke Therapy Part I

2009-02-15T20:46:00.000-08:00

When our new Cabelas opened here in North Idaho the fall of 2007, I became acquainted with a piece of cooking equipment called the Bradley Smoker. I became fascinated by this innovative electric smoker that just happened to be on sale during their grand opening event. After seeing it at the store I went home and researched it on the web to find out more about it and if I could find one at a lower price. I could not find it cheaper and heard nothing but rave reviews. So, once I was able to justify my purchase, I returned to Cabelas and bought the Bradley Smoker.

My justification for this purchase was the idea that I could save us hundreds of dollars a year smoking the venison that we harvested instead of paying the meat processor to do it. We are hunting enthusiasts but in all honesty we are not venison enthusiasts. So, we liked to have our venison processed in fresh sausage, smoked sausage and jerky.....basically processed beyond recognition. On top of the regular cut and wrap fee one would have to add the cost of sausage making and smoking fees, too. Needless to say, it was pretty pricey.

Once I got the smoker home I wanted to make my own jerky. I didn't have any venison available at the time so I experimented with Pedmontese beef which is the leanest beef out there, it's leaner than buffalo! I followed a Bradley recipe for mesquite-smoked jerky but I took the directions a little too literal and ended up smoking the jerky for the entire drying process. It's one thing to over-smoke your jerky but it's another thing to over-smoke it with mesquite!

Later I tried smoking a turkey breast and smoked the crap out of that poor bird, too. This was all part of the learning curve, oh but what a long, tall curve it seemed to be. Well, I just kind of kept away from the smoker for a while except for some trout that I smoked during the summer which turned out okay.

But I saved my greatest fiasco for last! My husband was planning to be out of town for an art show during the Labor Day weekend so I planned my first attempt making smoked sausage. I ran over to Cabelas and bought myself the HiMountain summer sausage kit. I had never stuffed sausage before let alone smoked sausage.

Stuffing those big fibrous casings with my little KitchenAid stuffer took forever. Then when I smoked the sausages I followed the directions to the letter until grew impatient for how long it was taking for them to reach the desired internal temperature. It was taking all day it seemed like. So, I cranked up the temperature on the smoker....BIG mistake! They made it to temperature alright but I ended up with long brown tubes filled with dry meat floating in a lake of fat and water. The poor things had to be lanced like a festering sore! They were horrible!

I put the cover on the Bradley and pretended it didn't exist for almost three months. The feeling of defeat was depressing. Cooking is a source of pride for me and I was producing things from my smoker that were barely fit to feed to the dog...if I had one to feed it to.

But it wasn't the smokers fault, I just needed some guidance which was to come in the form of a forum.

To be continued....

But I didn't know it was loaded.

2009-02-14T06:51:00.000-08:00

Any one who knows our daughter Emma quickly realizes that her mind is finely focused on one thing and one thing only...chickens. She is frequently called "the Chicken Girl". She loves her chickens.

But what started as her pets has escalated into a new obsession for mom. We started with a few chickens a couple years ago. Then I started collecting chickens like some women collect shoes. I don't know what got into me but I just was captivated by these birds. They were pretty, funny and came in such a variety of breeds and colors...I wanted to collect them all!

Then last summer one of our Australorp hens, "Pickety" decided to go broody. We had her sit on nine eggs and eight of them hatched. We were so excited. Then it dawned on me "Why can't we make our own chickens?!? Just think of all of the eggs and meat we could produce!" But to become a poultry alchemist one could not just wait on her hen to get in the mood to hatch eggs now and then. No, we would need an incubator! So, early this year I ordered the Hovabator 1588 with an auto turner.

My incubator arrived and I couldn't wait to use it. I knew I wanted to order some hatching eggs of breeds we didn't have like Cuckoo Marans and Speckled Sussex. But the folks at the Backyard Chicken Forum all recommended to practice on a batch of eggs that were either cheap or better yet, free. Well, with 11 hens and 2 roosters, I assumed the eggs from my own chickens would work. But this being the middle of winter I also assumed that they probably were not the most fertile eggs. It seemed the hens rarely ventured off their perches long enough to get "fertilized"...if you know what I mean!

So, I decided if I was to experience at least some luck this first time around, I would start off with 12 eggs. I candled the eggs after 7 days in the incubator and saw embryos in all of them! Candled the eggs at 10 days and could see that one had stopped developing and culled that egg. At day 18 I candled the eggs one last time and the remaining 11 all had little moving embryos.

But still with all of this development going on I kept telling myself there is no way this is going to work the first time I do this. Is it? I kept reading all of heartbreaking posts on the chicken forum of how folks have lost chicks on the day of the hatch due to the humidity not being right or some other factor. You do have to watch the humidity inside the incubator like a hawk. But I make a pretty good hawk!

Emma was so excited about the possibility of having chicks but I kept warning her not to get her hopes up too high. After all this was just an experiment to see if the manufacturer's setting on the incubator were correct. Well, to make a long story not much longer, all of the 11 eggs hatched beautifully with absolutely no problems. I was in shock! I didn't know the eggs were that fertile and I didn't know that we would do such a competent job incubating them. Just like so many shooting accidents where the person holding the gun says "I didn't know it was loaded", my sentiments exactly! I guess you shouldn't put eggs in the incubator unless you intend to hatch everyone of them. Especially if you are using a Hovabator 1588. Any incubator that sounds like a movie that Arnold could star in is surely going to get the job done.

2009-02-13T16:34:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my blog!

My name is Carolyn and I live in Hayden, Idaho, USA. It's a beautiful area located in the Panhandle region of Idaho. We moved here in the winter of 1996 after spending all of our lives in Southern California.

Needless to say, we have had no problem adapting to a life that is a 180 degree turn from our former life in old SoCal. We have developed so many new interests and hobbies since living here, both out of necessity and sometimes just for fun.

We are not survivalists or anything like that (though we do enjoy our guns!). But we do strive for a level of self reliance in our lives. Hence the title of this blog. Because many of the interests we have so often begin with the utterance of those exact words "If I can do it myself....."