Dozens...

Bird brains. You never really can understand what goes on behind those eyes. Sometimes they appear to be very dim bulbs indeed. Other times, they must think that we're the stupid ones.

We've been getting this certain brand of chicken feed that was completely organic, corn free, soy free, etc, etc, etc... and it was based on raw split peas and legumes. Sounds pretty good huh? These chickens were living the dream; at least I thought. For years the spring chicks would get to about 12-15 months and stop laying eggs altogether. Why? Why do the girls always go on strike when they get that old? Do they reach some know-it-all, rebellious teenager stage at this point? I didn't think so.

What do you know about raw legumes and digestion for humans? Raw legumes are an anti-nutrient; they pull nutrients out of the body as you digest them. And I knew that. But the thought hadn't exactly translated over to chickens. Poor girls. A friend of mine brought that to my attention. She brought it on herself as a personal task to figure out why the chickens weren't laying.

So we sought out a different feed for the poultry products. And we found one that will work for now. It's not organic, but it will do for now.

The chicken are laying more than 2 dozen eggs a day. Even though we've been trying to be creative with egg uses (lots of hard boiled eggs, egg salad sandwiches, mayonnaise, etc), we have quite the surplus of eggs right now. I think that the chickens are happy now.

Peanut sauce w/o the peanuts

I"m on a diet. The 'Primal Diet' to be exact. Meat, veggies, more meat, a little fruit, even more veggies, seeds/nuts, and then some more meat with a salad on the side. You eat like ancient man. Do I agree with the philosophy and basis of the diet? No. The constant references to evolution are bugging me. Do I think that it's a healthier way to eat? Yes. Grains, starches, legumes, and sugars have always been in my life, and I've paid the price. At least that's what the lab results are saying.

But if one is to only eat certain foods, won't it get boring? Oh yes. That's where the cookbooks come in handy. They are the spice of life, quite literally. Take broccoli for example. How long could you eat steamed broccoli and it stay interesting? Well, search no farther. Your green florets will take a little trip to SE Asia with this little (altered) recipe from Mark Sisson's book Quick and Easy Meals on page 67.

You will need:
- Broccoli (enough for the whole clan to have a hefty serving or two)
- 1 T rice wine vinegar
- 5 T almond butter
- 1/2 T honey
- 1 T toasted sesame oil
- 2 T tamari (soy sauce w/o the grain)
- 1/4 tsp chili oil (the original recipe calls for double that; my tongue would not forgive me if I used that much)
- water

Cut the broccoli into florets. Steam the greenies until it reaches desired tenderness.

Mix remaining ingredients execpt the water together in food processor until they form a smooth, albeit thick, dressing. Slowly add the water, tablespoon by tablespoon, until it reaches desired consistency. You will only need about 3-4 T of water.

Double the recipe. You'll want more.

Enjoy! You can use this as a veggie dip for carrots, drizzle it over your meat (it is most excellent with grilled chicken), or whatever you want to put it on! Hmm... wonder how it tastes on chocolate.

Chocolate Chips

It seemed to be a normal trip. Go to the food, pick up the food, haul the food home, unload the food, put all the food away. Done deal, right? Nope. Well, actually, yes, except for the last little bit.

I had just poured in an entire 1 lb. bag into the chocolate chip container in the pantry but the chips looked ever so slightly different. Only one way to investigate: taste test. Lo-and-behold, what I thought were chocolate chips were not chocolate chips at all. They were carob chips.

Now, before I proceed, you must understand my relationship with chocolate. I love it. The darker the better. I get antioxidants and endorphin releasing powers running through my system. Carob on the other hand is a chocolate impostor. You take a handful of the bits only to be thoroughly disappointed when your taste buds react to the not-so-chocolate-y-ness. Bleh.

Back to the story. We needed to return the bag since it obviously wasn't what we thought it was. There was only one problem - the carobs had mingled with the chocolates. I had just unintentionally created much more work than I had anticipated. I handpicked every piece of carob and put it into its rightful bag to return. An entire pound of the things. Oy. This was a job that required chocolate and patience. But I survived with the help of chocolate which was conveniently at hand if I picked out the carob.

Goodnight!

RIP Kevin?

Y'all read about Kevin, right? You'll want to catch up here.

We were bringing in the chickens. And the geese. And Kevin. Yeah, she still gets her own room in the barn -  complete with heat lamp for those really cold nights. Anyways... We searched the entire barn for Kevin that night. No Kevin. We looked outside the barn. Still no Kevin. We checked in the carport. And still no Kevin. We searched the barn again. Even the loft. Yet again, no Kevin.

What were we to do? Chickens are coyote fodder around here. They're fair game for any predator that comes around.

We just about decided that if Kevin didn't come in, she wouldn't be in that night. If she was at the barn door in the morning, all the better. That would save some tears from certain someones the next day.

I don't know what impulse told me to check over by the garbage cans in the barn, but I did. There was only one can open at the time, and I heard a faint cooing coming from inside. Lo-and-behold, Kevin was inside. Goodness knows why she decided to roost in a garbage can for the night, but she did. Now she just roosts on the gate and saves us some hassle come bed time.

So long for now!
~*SG*~

Rescue

Living on a Christmas tree farm, you'd think that we'd bring the biggest, fattest, tallest tree in the field into the house. That is an urban myth. It is my duty now to dispel of such thoughts. Last year, we didn't even have a tree. This year, we have a rescue. 

When an oven decides to smell of electrical burning, Mom sends everyone outside so that we don't breathe in the stench. We finished our chores. We really couldn't think of anything else to do. Then someone suggested that we go find our tree! Brilliant idea, I say! So off we went a-tromping through the field. We found several trees that sort of met the strict criteria, and we couldn't agree on any single tree (of course). Then, as we were headed back to home base, there it was - a lonely, slain tree sitting out there in the middle of the field severed from its life source. Someone must have cut it and found a better one, poor thing. There was only one thing to do with it. Give it some love and bring it into the house. We trimmed off the lower branches, gave the tree a shake, took fifteen minutes to cut an inch off the stump, and stood the tree up in it's stand. 

It looked pathetic. It couldn't decide if it would be a Charlie Brown tree or a Dr. Seuss tree. And my sister hated it from the get-go. She now hates me for bringing it into the house. Maybe she'll hate her Christmas present just as much. :P

Meanwhile, my brother, who has the highest standard that a Christmas tree can attain, was away at college classes. He had no clue what we were doing. His facial expression when he walked in the door was priceless. Appalled. Sheer shock. He also hated the poor tree. 

Despite the vocalizations of dislike, we strung lights up and decorated it. It didn't look as bad, but the top was still on the funky side. 

Oh well!  

At least we have a tree this year. 

Merry Christmas everyone!

A Mini Christmas Tree

Kids. Ya gotta love 'em. They have very different ideas about things than what you (the adult) could even begin to imagine. 

Case in point:

Today, as a family was getting out of their vehicle, one of the kids was begging for a mini Christmas tree. My dad offered the parents a killer deal for a small second tree, and they agreed. They successfully slayed the first tree and began hunting for the next. As they were tromping through the field the child picked up one of the sheared off tree tops and declared that he had found the perfect mini Christmas tree. The 'tree' was just the over-achieving efforts of a tree to be tall that was taken off. It really was just a stick covered with some needles and some stem buds, perfectly straight. Smaller than a Christmas tree seedling. Not even big enough to consider a Charlie Brown tree. But it was perfect. The little boy came back skipping and ever so happy about finding the perfect mini-tree. 

I will most certainly have more tales to tell from the Christmas tree farm adventures. Stay tuned. 

Kevin

There once was a baby chicken. She was not like the other 50 chicks that she was shipped with. You see, when someone orders over fifty chickens from the hatchery, they send you a free, 'rare' bird with the order. When the box arrived, there were 50 Cornish crosses and this special little black chick. No on could figure out what breed she was or if it was a he or a she! For her first 10 weeks of life, she grew up with the disgusting meat birds; always the smallest of the bunch (Cornish cross grow at a ridiculous, unnatural rate). Well, the time came for her ugly white accomplices to leave forever. I don't think that she misses them that terribly, but she took a certain liking to me. I never gave her any special attention, nor was I the primary caretaker. 

With her freaky mail-order friends now gone, we needed to integrate her into our existing flock. They didn't take a particular liking to her at all. With all the hen-pecking going on, she kept close to me while I was doing the chores. I walked across the driveway, and she followed me. I walked back to the barn, and she ran after me. The other hens started giving her a hard time, and she flew right up onto my shoulder and sat down. Then I walked back across the yard, and she stayed on my shoulder. I filled water buckets and she sat right on top of the well head watching me. I tried to set up a small pen for her on the lawn and she flew right out and ran after me again. But that's not all - she even sat at the front door all afternoon trying to get into the house. 

This chicken needed a different name. Eli had originally named it 'Waspus.' Ask the 7 year-old what he was thinking when he named it that. But yesterday afternoon, we decided that she needed a new name to fit this outgoing personality. It was unanimous; the bird's new name would be 'Kevin' after the bird in Disney Pixar's 'Up.' 

And yes, Kevin is a girl. 

The First Waltz

~*The Victoria and Albert Ball*~

November nineteen, two thousand and eleven

Victorian Era ball attire, or modern white tie required

A lovely chair in the bridal suite where we got ready for the ball

Waltzing

The ballgown

So many pretty dresses! I'm going to have to see if I can figure out how to draw this picture. Hmm...

There was even a billiards room

The ballroom

Hoop skirts and stairs don't work out too well.

Live music!

It was such a lovely evening! There's something about all the men wearing black tuxedo and all the ladies wearing their finest that made the entire night feel like a scene from a movie. We had all put so much time and effort into planning out gowns, and yet the evening flew by in an instant! I hope we can have more formal balls in the future!

Technology

 Oh, the bane and temptation of my existence! Why is our world so interconnected now? Thank the invention of the interwebs. The source for all the great gossip, coot kittehs, pop culture sensations, annoying ditties, stalking your friends and staying up to date on just about everything else going on in the world at that very moment that you had never really paid much attention to anyway.

I've had enough. My brain is loud enough without all the extra distractions. Honestly, it's really noisy in there all the time; my 'mindless' thing to do is listen to music. I have plenty going on and don't need to fill any extra time blocks. Those have been taken already. My brain is on overload, and things need to quiet down even just a little bit.

So, that's why I'm seriously cutting back on facebook, gchat, etc. Cutting back even more than once a day. I'm too ADD to handle all this. I don't hate you; I'm not avoiding you. If I feel a need to electronically connect with friends, I will log on. I'm realizing how much I relish the opportunity to have a real face-to-face conversation with someone. I won't be deleting accounts because that's how I'm able to get a hold of people about events, pictures and such. Email is still a viable form of correspondence as well. I'm still going to there in your computer, there will just be much less of me haunting the pages and connections of your world.

I'm also realizing how much privacy has become a nostalgic word. There is none of it in this overly-connected world. I can be having a private email conversation, and the ads pertain to what is in the email. Doesn't that raise some red flags? That annoying 'ticker' thing in the upper right-hand corner on Facebook? Do you really need to be able to see how your friends are interacting with their friends. You don't even know who they are, and you can see their lives per Facebook  Viruses, hackers, malware are all out there to get personal information and make your (electronic) life miserable.

Laptop, you are hereby exiled from my room. No more sitting there ever so slyly on my desk right next to my bed. No more shall you annoy me with your 3 AM installations of the latest Windows updates that you decided that I needed. Text speak? Puhlease... Use correct grammar and punctuation in all forms of communication - your future employers will thank ye.

No, I won't shoot the computer - yet. 

Pumpkin Milkshake

Note: When it comes to the spices, you will want to do it to taste. Since the pumpkin mixture is going to be very diluted once it is in the milkshake, be sure to put a little more than tastes good at the moment. You can always add some in the blender, but you can't take it away. 

You will need:
1 ½ cups of pureed pumpkin
Pinch of ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, allspice to taste
Sugar
Vanilla ice cream and some milk

First, put your pureed pumpkin into a small mixing bowl. Then add just a slight dash of sugar, and the various spices to taste. Be careful with the ginger and cloves though! They are quite potent. Then you will mix the pumpkin mixture so that there aren’t any clumps of spices or sugar left in the mixture – those don’t make good eats. Now put the ice cream in the blender along with the pumpkin mixture and some milk. Blend until completely mixed. Enjoy with a dollop of whipped cream and a dash of nutmeg or cinnamon on top.

This recipe is by Sarah G; it was inspired by Burgerville’s seasonal shake that she can never get enough of.