Into the Woods:: 9/27

Thank goodness for fall walks in the woods. I have tried to be true to my into the woods every week for the year, but with vacations in July and my back out, I skipped 4 weeks when I was home. The summer woods just don't inspire me or call to me to visit. Oh but now, the fall woods are the most wonderful of all. You don't have to worry about trampling over delicate wildflowers, there are no mosquitoes and every square inch is up for exploring.We climbed trees.
Felt the world beneath our feet.
Explored under bridges that are normally under water.
Felt.
Discovered tiny beauty.
Crawled through our favorite log.





Enjoying every moment and inch.Happy Fall.

Hen's are Laying

I love having chickens and ham so thankful that the counsel of my town doesn't object. I think being able to raise your own food is a freedom that everyone deserves. That being said, I am also completely in love with the blue eggs we are now getting. Ben and I have been pretty die hard production hens until now. We wanted hens with good feed conversions that also put on good fat that we could use when they were butchered and have even selected ladies for feather for fly tying. This year we went for some egg color as we thought they would blow Asher away, which was totally the case. He loves the blue eggs, though he was sad at breakfast this morning when the insides were the same.

I love them too, and am so happy that I had an excuse to get the Americana's that lay them. We are back in eggs after a bit of a hiatus since the last retirement day, Hooray!

Fall!!

We made our first of many trips out to our closest pumpkin patch on a wonderfully blustery first week of fall day. It was perfect.

Asher was obsessed with filling his wagons with tons of food to store for winter, it was hard to keep up with him. Luckily we got a flat tire that had to be changed while we were there, giving him more time to move all the different squash around the farm.

Really, really hands down my most favorite time of year.

Moving the Flock

We headed out to the farm (not ours) Sunday morning to get things situated for the arrival of the male flock. They have some pretty nice new digs. Water ready and bedding layed down by the boys. We are happy to have a new home for these birds. As much fun as it has been to raise chickens on our teeny tiny small corner in town lot, we are ready to stop pushing our immediate home to all the limits as we seem to be spilling over a bit these days. All inspiring us to look for a new place to call home.

This is River's signature look. We aren't sure where exactly it came from, but it has been evolving over the last few months.

We are working on this project with a couple other folks. Rachel and Micah took our broiler raising class last year and are taking on 15 birds of their own and the farm host is going to have 30 of their own. The flock will be out on a great pasture shared with some sheep and protected by a wonderful dog. Should all make for 2011 to be an indulgent, delicious, chicken year.

The Male Flock

After a long drawn out process of finally deciding not to raise our own chickens for the freezer this year, we were approached by a farmer to do a project on her land and ended up with 90 chicks in our garage. The boys were thrilled and then the next week another hundred chicks arrived in the mail, big surprise. Luckily all of those found new homes, and we are back in the broiler raising game. True to our tradition, we spent time taking a lot of the boys outside to get some sun, learn to chase down insects and eat greens. River learned how to effectively chase and catch the peeps.

Sneak Peak

This went in the ground, and this is what is staring to come out. So excited for the sweat potato harvest we will be having in the next month.

Community Food Processing

We had another community processing day and it was absolutely wonderful. We have lots of work to do in processing and were able to share the workload with lots of other folks and get a lot of things done.

Someone brought apple to sauce, I have to say the pampered chef apple peeler kicks butt, and apples stewing, so delicious, this has moved up on my list.
Cherry tomatoes were dehydrated, what a great treat, so sorry these aren't staying in my home.
Over 100lbs of red peppers were roasted.
Eggplant roasted, peeled and canned, (pressure canner, 10 lbs, 15 minutes) for lasagna and babaganoush.
Lots of smoked chiles, now in the dehydrator.
Smoked shitake, because why not. When the smoker is going, you might as well throw it all on- BTW it was delicious on our pizzas.
Kids included, eating the produce.
Homemade bacon, smoked and roasted.
Pizzas on the grill. So easy and good. Tip: keep pizzas small and toppings in the middle with a nice crust to avoid flare up (cheese especially) and a scorched bottom.
Beer consumed, food eaten with friends, perfect, perfect day.

Freezer Paper Stencils

This was my most intense freezer paper stenciling project to date. Not that you can really call it intense, I mean it's just an exacto knife running over freezer paper and painting. Maybe most intricate. I was so happy to learn recently that you can reuse the stencils if you take them off slowly enough. I think with something very simple, you could use it again and again. But for these more intricate cut outs, I only had the patience to tear it off once with care.

We were in need of a little privacy banner in the backyard and this is the project that was dreamed up and actually completed in under a week (!! a record around here) thanks to some help from my brother and sister in law who humored me along with some alcohol and cut out some paper while I converted some drawings into more stencil friendly sketches.

BTW, I puffy heart freezer paper stencils.

Fish Prints

We have been busy around here, celebrating birthdays, cooking, preserving and really enjoying our new patio. For Ben's birthday this year we got some paint and fish casts to do some printing and the boys loved having something to paint and it turned out to be a fun family activity.

Our results definitely leave something room for improvement, but for a first run we are pleased.

Something Popped Up!

Just when I thought we were going to have to wait another season for our shitakes, they decided to start popping up like mad. A few one day and then 2 gallons the next and a repeat a couple days later.
A enjoys checking them each day to see what he can harvest.

Lots eaten fresh and lots dried for later.

They are so beautiful.

and grow perfectly in our shade rich yard.