A Simple Sauce for Dark Meat

If you enjoy the dark meat of poultry, venison or steak, here is a great sauce that is fast and easy to make, and tastes like something you would expect from a fine dining establishment!  Venison or a nice thick steak is my favorite for this recipe.

Ingredients:
1 cup of full-bodied red wine
3 Tablespoons of unsalted butter, cut into 1/4 inch cubes. (Butter should be very cold)

Directions:
Sear your choice of meat in a stainless steel or cast-iron skillet.  Remove the meat when finished and set aside under foil to keep warm.  While pan is still hot, add the wine to the pan and deglaze.  As soon as the wine begins to simmer, add the cubed butter and whisk continually until the sauce begins to thicken and reduce.

Plate your meat and add the amount of sauce you desire.  Sprinkle with cracked black pepper and enjoy!

Venison Medallions and Roasted Asparagus

Roasting and Reminiscing...

Winter is officially upon us as of next week!  Hard to believe isn't it? Things around the farm are changing, and the animals are all trying to adjust to the colder weather.  The chickens have be hanging around their heat lamp later into the morning and earlier each evening. The horses are all getting their thick winter coats in preparation for the long winter days. The garden has been cleared out and tilled over, with only the parsley patch left to provide a splash of green until spring arrives.  Garlic was planted in early November, with the hope that July will deliver a nice little harvest to dry and store. 

I began the year on my new farm in January of this year.  The number of farm animal inhabitants I started with back then has considerably grown since then, beginning with 7 animals, and now, in the middle of December, the count is at 30 something! 

Start-up costs were high this year with the farm purchase.  There are just some things you need when you own a farm. February's large expenses were due to getting the loft stocked with hay, and also buying a bulk order of sawdust bedding for the (then two) horses. February also had a rooster and a hen added to the homestead. 

March was was quiet and cold, and found us with another Thoroughbred added on that we purchased in Chicago.  April brought us a goat doeling, a stray pitbull, and 27 little day-old chicks from the hatchery. Oh, and six baby Pekin ducklings!

April was expensive, with the purchase of a lawn tractor to mow the few acres of yard to keep things tidy. May was another expensive month, bringing us a new to us, but very old Ford 9n tractor, along with a brush-hog and blade.  May also brought us another racehorse.

June hummed along quietly, with little expense in planting a small garden.  July brought us another chicken, August passed by under the radar.  September came along hatching five chicks for Labor Day weekend, and another horse! October and November were expensive due to stocking up the loft with hay for the winter, and the purchase of a hay elevator to get that hay into the loft!

And we all know December is expensive, with all the gift-giving, party throwing, decadent eating, drinking and merriment that goes along with this time of year. With that, I better end this post. I have a pork shoulder roast to present to a hungry husband...

Score the skin, rub in Salt, Pepper, Garlic, Sage and Oregano.  Roast low at 325 degrees for a few hours, and...

Ta Da! Tender and Juicy!



Pasta Sauce, Simple and Quick

I was in the mood for some fresh pasta sauce this weekend.  Although tomatoes are not garden-fresh this time of year, with a little garlic and onion you can pretty much make anything taste "good enough."


 

I like to boil my tomatoes for a few seconds so that I can easily peel off the skins before I seed and chop them. It makes it a lot easier to chop them up too!

Chop everything up to your liking and then its all ready to simmer with some italian spices. Oh, and a little salt and pepper too!

Toss it all into a pan with some good olive oil...

Cook your sauce down for a bit.  Ready your pasta of choice, and then join the two in blissfull harmony with a sprinkle of fresh parmesan for the grand finale. Delicious!

Well, the broody hen finally hatched a little bobble-head. It’s a “Turken,” also known as Transylvania Naked Neck chicken. I was hoping it would have been one of the fancy French rooster’s offspring, but alas, the hen had other plans. Now she's left sitting on one egg and a golfball; so I have a 50% chance of hatching a chicken or a golfer, right?


Another hen went broody as well over the weekend. Any ideas on what to do when this happens? Why these hens think it’s a wise idea to have a bunch of little chicks running around in the dead of winter is beyond me.

I keep pondering how, or if I should, do anything special to prepare for hurricane “Sandy,” other than make sure all the animals are comfortable. It has been raining constantly up here since Saturday (no surprise), much to the delight of the ducks, but not the rest of the animals. It delayed me in putting more hay up over the weekend. I still need to get 150 bales in my loft for the winter. I’m sure many of us are preparing for the storm as I write this. All summer everyone prayed for rain. Well folks, here it comes. Be safe.



10/26/12     Black Australorp / Turken Chick



La Marans

Weekend Projects

I absolutely love the Fall season. The smell of firewood burning, the leaves changing, the cooler weather - everything! Following is a list of some of the "Fall" things I’d like to do this weekend. However, real life always seems to get in the way of the “want-to’s” and “have-to’s” when you live on a farm.


What I would like to do…

-Clean out Chicken Roost
-Make Apple Butter
-Bake Bread
-Bottle Mead
-Pick Pumpkins
-Build a bonfire

In reality, it will go more like this:

-Clean out Chicken Roost
-Laundry, laundry and more laundry
-Cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning
-Muck stalls
-Pick up and unload hay
-Scrub water buckets
-Panic and ponder whether I can handle Wintertime with 39 farm animals?

Zucchini Fritatta

Below is my most favorite Zucchini recipe ever. I thought it would be nice to share. Very easy to make and really tasty! I think it’s even good for you? One large duck egg can be substituted in place of the two chicken eggs, with the same results. You can also play around with the amounts of any of the ingredients, really. There is a photo of this dish in my last post [September]. Enjoy!


Zucchini Fritatta (or whatever you want to call it)

2 small zucchini sliced into thin rounds

1/4 cup onion – sliced very thin

2 eggs

1/2 tsp chicken bouillon granules

1/2 tsp Italian seasoning

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

1/4 tsp ground black pepper

1 cup shredded cheddar or any cheese you prefer. You can also mix different cheeses together.

Butter (or cooking spray) a small shallow baking dish. In a small bowl, wisk eggs, bouillon, Italian seasoning, mustard and pepper together; set aside.

Layer ½ of the sliced zucchini and onions in the baking dish. Sprinkle with half of the cheese. Repeat layers. Pour egg mixture evenly over the top when finished layering.

Bake, uncovered at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes. Allow to rest 5 minutes, then cut and serve.

Yield: 2-3 servings

Perhaps the last of the 2012 season's harvest...

Four Days Until Fall!

If you haven’t yet heard of him, Joel Salatin is quite an inspiration. I started reading one of his books recently. This one is titled “You Can Farm, the Entrepreneur’s Guide to Start and Succeed in a farming Enterprise.” The book covers quite a bit - developing your farm business vision, asks you to question if farming is something you even really want to do, examines how to test the foundation of your farming ideas, shows how to establish your market for your product(s), and the stresses the importance of keeping good farm records. It even talks about the ten worst farm businesses. According to Joel’s list, anything horse-related was “iffy” at best. I’ll skip explaining that to my horse-training husband for the time being.


I got the book in the hope that it could give me some ideas on how to create / market a product or products on my own little 14 acre plot. So far the book has given me some really great ideas, and I’ve barely started reading. Joel has a lot of good information on why we should really understand where our food comes from, how it’s raised and treated, and to challenge ourselves to start relying on local, small-farm produced food and products, rather than the processed crap we’ve come to accept as “normal” food (i.e. chicken nuggets, inferior, mass-produced eggs, etc.). Now I find myself eagerly anticipating reading two other books of his: “Pastured Poultry Profits” and “Folks, This Ain’t Normal.” I think this guy is really going to help change the way people eat and where they start buying their food.

My personal, first farm goal is to be able to just feed myself and my husband, with the food we raise, grow or hunt; and only have to use the stores to provide things like flour, sugar, salt, tea, coffee, oil, some spices, etc. My next goal would be to start selling the excess. Eventually, I’d love to be self-sufficient enough to not have to ever worry about losing my full-time job. To be independent and self-sufficient through farming would be a dream come true. Baby steps… It’s a lot of work and all I can do is try and learn as much as I can each day, hopefully making very few mistakes along the way.

The farm is plugging along as we head into fall, which will officially occur this Saturday, September 22nd. We had a young horse brought to us for 20 days of training / breaking. That went very well. The owner paid promptly when he came to pick up the horse, and the horse trained nicely, with no incidents or accidents. I hope they continue to send us those kind! The chickens and ducks are starting to produce eggs finally, and on schedule, at six months of age. The ducks continually are laying one egg each per day so far. The chickens are laying around 5-7 per day at this point. I have 19 laying hens. I have to say I am surprised at the size of some of the eggs – quite small considering all my hens are large breeds that are supposed to lay large brown eggs. I’m not sure if this is because they’re young, or because they’re free range? If anyone out there has an answer to this, I’d love to know!


Greeting me at the door each morning - waiting for breakfast!


Garden Update: the garden is on the finishing end for the season, with just the pumpkins, zucchini and parsley remaining, and all doing well. I made a frittata? the other day for breakfast, with zucchini and onions from the garden, and eggs from the ducks. I ended up eating the entire thing myself be the end of the day…

Tightwad Tuesday

Today I am implementing a “no-spend” day, and only driving to and from work – no other pit stops. What spurred this frugal panic attack you might ask? I was doing a sort of mid-month spending review, and got excited about where some of my numbers were. See, I am a bit of a spreadsheet and number-crunching junkie / nerd for the most part, and I keep some pretty detailed spending records (down to the penny) of where my money goes and comes from each year. This allows me to easily track where I’m spending too much or saving too little, and also provides me with the option to challenge myself each month/year to see if I can spend less than the previous month/year. I’ve been doing this since my early 20’s. And no, I don’t have a psychiatrist.

I know, I know, that evil word “Budget” is ringing through your ears and making your eyes roll back. Personally, I like to view it as my “Guideline.” If I screw up in one area, I simply try to make it all balance in another. Tracking everything like this really does come in handy when you want to refer back to your spending habits, and also when it comes to forecasting future spending, like taxes, car repairs, insurance, the dreaded Christmas holiday, etc. And the more you do it, the more it becomes second nature to save your receipts and log them into the spreadsheet. It also forces you to see whether raising 23 chickens and 5 horses is a benefit or a liability (I bet you can guess what the latter is). Or whether your “Entertainment” category needs attention (cough, ahem). It can also tell you how much the garden you planted actually saved you on your yearly grocery bill. Or the cost benefit of making your own wine rather than buying it. You get the idea. I encourage everyone to try this, even for just one month. You will be amazed when you can clearly see where your money actually goes each month.

So the cause of my excitement today, came when I was reviewing my monthly grocery expenses for the past seven months. Mind you, this is for food only (no wine, toiletries, or cleaning supplies, etc.) for two adults. My highest monthly cost for groceries was for the month of July, and came in at whopping $367.88! I spent like a mad woman and was definitely not happy with myself. I even gained weight (Gasp!). My lowest monthly food cost for the year was in January, when I only spent a mere $179.23. What’s so exciting about this you ask? Well, at the time of this post, my total food bill for August is only at $122.85! This means if I can control my trips to the grocery store for ten more days, and use up things in my pantry and from the garden, I will set a new low in that “Guideline” category for the year. Yesssss!!! As I told you, I’m a spreadsheet nerd.

Nearly all our cooking is done from scratch. I even make all of our own bread, and I don’t even own a bread machine! Fortunately my husband is as good a cook as I, and actually loves to cook as well. Our meals are healthy and varied. We supplement our meat purchases by hunting rabbit, deer, doves, fish, and the occasional squirrel (don’t laugh – they’re good!). We will soon be adding to the list farm raised, organic, free-range ducks and chickens that we have been raising here on our farm. And the hens should start laying eggs next month. Since we just bought this farm this past January, we will wait until next year to raise a pig, and maybe a cow, with the goal of never having to buy our meat from the grocery stores again. We’ll also be expanding our garden and adding fruit trees in the future.

So that’s my story for Tightwad Tuesday. Maybe next time I’ll post some of my favorite tightwad recipes for you to experiment with  :  )

UPDATE:  Finished the month with a total of $171.53 spent in the food / grocery category - new record!

August Is Upon Us!

It’s hard to believe that August is already upon us, which means we only have about a month and a half left of summer. Depressing, since I have spent the majority of spring and summer healing a broken foot and torn ligaments, and I still have a long way to go. I have missed out on getting much done around the farm due to my injury. And now it’s time to stockpile enough hay and bedding for the animals to get us through the winter months. Loading up the hay loft was a big enough job before I broke my foot; now it’s really going to be a challenge! Fortunately, we will be purchasing a much-needed hay elevator this coming Sunday. I’m not sure if bags of bedding can be lifted with it, but at least I know we will now be able to get the hay stocked.


We have a couple of new additions to the farm. This little fuzzy ball of fluff, the resulting combination of my Buff Brahma Bantam hen and Black Copper Maran rooster, was hatched in the incubator on the morning of July 25th. The other three eggs did not hatch unfortunately. I will be putting three more eggs from that pair into the incubator this week, and hope for a better hatch rate this time around. It will be exciting to see what this little guy (or girl?) looks like this spring. It may become dinner if it’s a rooster…

The second addition is this Snowflake Appaloosa mare – a rescue horse from a friend, who is trying to thin down his own herd. She isn’t really much use to us, since she isn’t a racehorse. She needs someone to finish breaking and training her, and the gentleman who gave her to us is growing too old to risk doing the job himself. We’re not sure yet how she’s going to work out. At this point she’s a liability, and the goal of the farm is to limit animals which don’t produce an income, provide a food source or serve in some other way that benefits the farm.

That pretty much does it for updates over the past two weeks. I'm looking forward to some cooler weather finally moving through in the next few days.  And fingers crossed, we're finally going to get some ripe tomatoes from the garden any day now!

Ready-Set-Go !



New Nest Boxes

 The new nest boxes for the hens arrived yesterday afternoon and no haste was made in getting them installed and set up.  They are all ready to go!  Now I just need the "girls" to figure everything out and start laying some eggs.  In the past two weeks, the rooster has decided the little ladies are now "of age" and has been quite busy chasing them all around the farm.  Buffy, the only laying hen, finally gets a long deserved break!

Fact: When consumers require or desire unseasonable food choices, the farmers’ costs immediately increase, as well as the production requirements and costs.

“Centralization and mass production equals standardization, or a lack of genetic diversity, because assembly lines in production plants cannot tolerate chickens or tomatoes or any other food products that vary in size or shape by more than a certain percentage.”

For this reason, we now have food that is genetically and chemically modified so that it “fits” both the consumers’ ideal and the needs of the production plants. Also, for this reason, we now get big, beautiful, perfectly sized and shaped, tasteless fruit and vegetables that are available anytime of the year – with big prices to go along.

I thought about this the other day while I was out picking wild black raspberries in the field. Their taste was unlike anything you can buy in the grocery store. And cost was nowhere near the $3.99 the local grocery store charges for a small container holding just a few ounces. The only cost involved for my black raspberries was 30 minutes of fresh air, sunshine, and a nice, peaceful walk with my two dogs and goat. Okay, and a few scratches from the berry bushes…

This made me ponder of all the possibilities my little 14 acre farm has to offer. I can very easily have enough chickens to feed my household two chickens per week, all year round and provide enough eggs to supply us, and sell or give away. The 25 chickens I have now are completely free-range, and have so much available to eat they don’t even require supplemented food during the warmer months.

We are also able to hunt deer and rabbit to supplement our meat supply. I also have a pond and stream that supplies various fishes and large, lovely crayfish on occasion. The front yard contains a patch of wild garlic that I have just harvested and hung up to dry. I have a 6 acre hay field that I could cut for hay, provided I had the equipment. I have wild strawberries in the early spring. I could milk my goat and make cheese!

I live in the fourth largest Amish community in the United States, and I often wonder how much of their own food they produce for themselves, and how many other people are able to produce the majority of their family’s food on their land. Does anyone out there produce the majority of their family’s food? And if so, what kinds of crops / food are you producing?

Chicken Challenges...

The temperature is reading 93 degrees and my weekend officially begins in one hour. As soon as I arrive home my first line of duty will be checking on all the animals and making sure no one is overheated or out of water. Animals first, then a little wine for me : )

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my new nest boxes for the hens will arrive sometime this weekend, so that I can finally complete set-up of their nesting / roosting area. My chickens are free-range, in the sense that they leave the barn and head for the fields (no fences!) at their own leisure and on their own schedule, and then put themselves to bed on their own schedule as well. Very easy keepers! However, now that they are older and about ready to start laying eggs, their area requires a little more than just a floor space covered in pine shavings. My mission this weekend is to add roosts and nest boxes, then we’ll be all set.

I have a Buff Brahma Bantam, who is old enough (2 yrs) to produce, and is “kept company” by a Black Copper Maran Rooster. I have four eggs of hers that I just placed in my new incubator yesterday evening. Crossing my fingers again, that I will hatch some little ones around July 26th. This hen has only ever produced light brown eggs. Oddly enough, I found a nearly white egg in her nest box yesterday. Perhaps my other little hens are starting early? That egg was one of the four I placed into the incubator.

Buffy's "chickens-to-be"?

The Show Must Go On...

Chiva, the goat, looking after my broken foot...It's been a while since my last post due to an unfortunate horse accident. I went for a quick leisure ride as usual one evening, and ended up in the ER with a broken navicular bone in my foot, and many abrasions and bruises on the rest of me. I won't go into detail, but will add that one should never venture out on horseback alone without a helmet and protective vest.

I quickly discovered things get ugly when the person who handles the majority of the farm duties becomes laid up for any length of time (at least at my farm). It seems like everyone else in the household panics, and instead of jumping in and taking care of business, becomes moody and depressed without the leader in "leader mode" anymore. Tomorrow makes eight weeks since the accident and I still will be unable to do too many things around the farm for some time. Very frustrating.

Buffy's two eggs in the incubator didn't quite work out. I know it is the cheapest incubator around, but I was hoping for some sort of miracle anyway. One chick hatched, and seemed very healthy, but died by morning. All I can figure is that it became overheated under the heat lamp, or was lonely. The other egg contained nothing, upon inspecting it and cracking it open - an unfertilized dud! So now I have purchased a bigger, better incubator that holds 41 eggs, and also takes care of turning and regulating the temperature of the eggs.

My little Boer goat is growing big. She was born February 17th of this year. Goats are a lot of fun, at least this one is. Technically, I suppose I do not have the authority to tell you that ALL goats are fun, being that this is my first experience owning any goat, ever.

Because of my recent injury, I have a lot more free time now. Normally, I am under the hectic schedule of "thoroughbred race season" from April - November. I came to the realization this could be a blessing in disguise: I now have free weekends to do uninterrupted research and compile ideas on the direction I can take my farm in the future. Narrowing down two or three areas of focus for income-producing possibilities isn't easy. In fact, it's maddening. I want to do EVERYTHING! Training and laying-over racehorses is a given. But what about producing garlic, heirloom potatoes, specialty herbs and mushrooms? Or turkeys for sale during the holidays? Or raising a pig for our own meat consumption? I already have the "chicken thing" going - all are free range and due to start egg production in September. And then there are the damn ducks. Why did I ever get ducks? Some will most certainly end upon the dinner table. I started gathering recipes last week. I may keep a couple for eggs, if they're lucky....

I do realize that none of these ideas will make me rich, or even bring in much of a side income; but every small move toward relying less on big-chain grocery stores and chemically laden, mass-produced food will only make things better for me and the environment in the long run. : ) And it's just plain fun damn it!

Summer!

About Thyme...

Friday, January 6, 2012 I became the proud, excited and somewhat nervous owner of a 14 acre “mini-farm” in a small rural Amish community. The property consists of a large, well-built 5 bedroom house, a five stall barn with a tack room and 2000 bale capacity hay loft, and a four car garage. The land is gorgeous, with a mix of fenced pasture, hay field, and some woods with a stream running through it. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it all.


Saturday, January 7th was a special day for me. My husband and I loaded up our two horses from the place we were boarding them, and headed off to our (their) new home. It felt really great to know that we would now be the ones who cared for them, and now we could brush, ride, handle and feed them whenever we wanted just by walking out our back door!

The rest of the week was a nightmare of driving between the two houses trying to get things moved to the new place.