Carving Out Time

I have so much to blog about! Unfortunately, having so much to tell about means, well, that we have a lot going on- so, I'm having a hard time finding computer time to document it all.

The weather is cold and rainy here this weekend, though, so I hope to make some time to write a couple of entries...

I haven't forgotten my loyal readers and I'm working on setting aside time to keep up...

27 Babies

 

We have added 27 new little creatures to our growing farm family! Our chicks arrived a day earlier than we expected, and involved a drive to pick them up at a post office that has people working there on Sundays, but now we're settling into a nice little routine of thermometer checking and water refilling- not to mention lots of cuddling adorable little fluffballs!


Here they are getting warmed up in their new home (they are under a red heat lamp, and that is the thermometer they're huddled around):

 

We ordered the "Brown Egg Layer Special" from Murray McMurray Hatchery, so we're not exactly sure what we have yet... They also threw in a free exotic/rare breed as a bonus; it's the only one we can tell apart from any others. It's head has a totally different shape and it is a bit smaller. Based on the pictures in the catalog, our best guess is that it is a Crevecoeur, a very rare, crested breed that originated in France. There are some cute chipmunk-striped ones that we hope might be Speckled Sussex, but we'll see as we go. We do know we have at least 5 or 6 differetn breeds out of the 27 chicks. We'll keep you posted! Still fine tuning our brooder setup, so off to check the thermometer again...

The Last of the Potatoes

As you may have guessed from my last post, tomatoes are my favorite thing to eat that I grow in my garden. Well, they are pretty much my favorite thing to eat period. But last year, my favorite thing to grow was potatoes. Sure, I knew how they grew underground. I also knew how you went about harvesting them. But I had never done it myself, never seen it close up. The first time I went out and fingered a few new potoatoes out from the mound to have for a summer dinner, I was giddy with the excitement of pulling my own potatoes from the soil. I felt the kind of excitement I associate with my childhood, when all was new and fresh and amazing.

Around here, the old adage is that you should plant potatoes on St Patrick's Day. Well, we didn't even get moved in until May and didn't get the garden going until June, but my grandmother's friend gave me his leftover seed potatoes... So, I stuck them in the ground and figured I had nothing to lose. Within a couple months, I was wheedling a few potatoes out here and there. And a couple months after that, I was lifting a whole variety of sizes of beautiful red potaotes from a little corner of the garden with a big grin on my face. Maybe you saw one of the baskets full in this post on my photo blog. We got about two of those size baskets full. We stored them first in the basement, and then, when we started using the woodstove down there, moved them under one of the beds. I just used the last of them this week.

 

Here's one of my favorite recipes to commemorate the occasion:

Potato Soup

1 medium onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped fine
1 to 3 carrots, chopped fine
3 Tbsp butter
8 medium potatoes, cubed
8 C. chicken broth (or veggie broth)
1 C. milk
1 Tbsp. dried thyme (or a larger amount of fresh)
1 Tbsp. dried parsley (or a larger amount of fresh)
1 tsp. salt (or to taste- depends on the saltiness of the broth)
Pepper, to taste
Grated cheese

Saute onions, celery and carrots in butter until beginning to soften. Add potatoes and broth and bring just to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and cook for about 30-40 minutes or until potatoes are soft. Stir in milk, thyme, parsley, salt and pepper and simmer for a few more minutes.

Now, depending on your preference for consistency, you can eat as is, use a potato masher to mash some potatoes in the pot, blend it with an immersion blender, or remove some to a blender or food processor and puree. You can mash/blend/puree it until smooth, or leave it- like I do- with some chunks of potato.

Serve with grated cheese on top. Perfect for a chilly evening with warm bread and a salad.

 

And, yes, I will be growing potatoes again this year.

Yes, it is an obsession.

 

Tomatoes, how do I love thee? Oh, let me count the ways.

14 new ways this year, apparently. I still have a few more basic varieties left from previous years' seeds, but I couldn't resist these luscious offerings from the Seed Savers Exchange catalog.

No, I'm not quite sure how I am going to fit all the seedlings in my sunny window until May. But I'll find a way.

Because I know this is true.

Snow Day

After a long, cold wait we finally got some snow on Tuesday. It was only a couple of inches, but it was enough for a bit a sledding and a lot of fun. I love the way everything looks covered in a blanket of snow.



Mr. M has been working hard to keep the wood stove supplied. He also started stacking the split wood on the porch- oh so nice for me on days like today when it is 8 degrees outside.

 

Wood splitting in action- he actually really likes this task. In the background is our chicken coop in progress. We have 25 chicks coming at the end of the month!

 

The boys had great fun scraping and hauling the snow around. Miss Headstrong had fun dumping snow on them...

 

And the girls were smart enough to stay nestled all snug in their coop...

 

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming of frigid weather and no snow. Sigh.

Notes on the Cold

Today marked yet another day in which we didn't get any of the snow that was predicted. Wah!

We have certainly had our share of cold, though.

I'm sure I was in colder temps when I was a wee tot living in North Dakota, but I can't specifically remember any temperature colder than the 7 below zero we had here a couple weeks ago. I do have a vague memory of a -13 reading, but I can't place if it was something in my own experience or... a book? a movie? a math problem?

Anyway, we had a real, live, specifically memorable cold streak here and our little wood stove was working hard. She was doing great, but with that kind of cold, we decided to shut off the doors to the bedrooms, concentrate the heat in the middle of the house and all camp out in the living room. Somehow the first night Mr M and I ended up sleeping head to foot on the couch while the kids got the double mattress on the floor. The additional problem was that 3yo Mr Handful ended up next to me so there were three of us sleeping on the couch. Funny how I still forget I'm too old to sleep in such a set up and still move comfortably the next day. Night two we had wisened up and put the half-our-size Miss Headstrong and Mr Thoughtful on the couch.

So we woke up to -7 degrees and I just had to know how cold the closed-off bedrooms had gotten... the kids room was a chilly 30 degrees and this gorgeous, unbelievable piece of art is what was rendered on our bedroom window:



Those botanic-looking fronds are ice formations! You can see another close-up image over at my photo blog. How exactly does this happen? Science lesson for me anyone? Or maybe I'll just continue thinking of it as a bit of magic...

Imperfect Cold Frame

I am trying to keep my perfectionist tendencies in check these days. You know, those ones that keep me from doing anything I can't do "just right". (I'm pretty sure that period is supposed to go inside the quotes, but it has always seemed to me that it should be on the outside. Plus, remember those tendencies I'm fighting?) Wait, am I supposed to put any punctuation after a sentence completely encapsulated by parentheses? Bogging. Down. Must. Continue. And you wonder why I didn't blog at all for almost a month...

Anyway, I have a new friend! And I knew I had found a good one when I tasted her homemade bread, drank tea with her, and wished my house was decorated just like hers. And did I mention our kids- her three homeschooled children (girl, boy, boy) and my three homeschooled children (girl, boy, boy)- get along wonderfully? Oh- but what really topped it off was when I mentioned to her that my dear Mr. M heartlessly threw out my beautiful, salvaged, intended-to-become-a-cold-frame windows instead of putting them on the moving truck, and she cried out, Oh! I just saw some old windows today in the dumpster at the recycling center and I was going to pull them out but couldn't think exactly what to use them for! I'll go back in and get some out on my way home today if you want. (I'm not using quotation marks, because it has been over a month and I don't remember exactly what she said.) It was friendship at first dumpster dive.

So, the whole point of that lead-in is that I used the reclaimed windows that my new friend so excitedly salvaged for me, and after a month of not having time, energy, or exact know-how to build the perfect cold frame, I decided that something was better than nothing and built an imperfect cold frame. It isn't angled toward the south. Heck, it isn't even angled. It isn't airtight, and it isn't level. But it is sheltering my mixed greens rather nicely. Here it is, in all its imperfect glory:

 

Thanks, Colleen!

So Many Blog Topics, So Little Time

There are so many things that have been going on the past couple weeks that I really want to blog about.

-There has been much cooking and baking.
-The kids have been particularly creative in their imaginary play.
-We had fun walking around near our house and finding our Christmas tree.
-The house is adorned with beautiful kid-made decorations.

Most of these topics have lovely photos to go along with them. Here's hoping I find some time while we are visiting family to catch you up on things around here...

The Mother of Invention

Three-year-old Mr. Handful is working on an invention. He came up with it when helping his brother and sister carry in wood for the stove. I don't think the blueprints are very far along, but the idea is there. And it is just what (he thinks) we need: a "remote-controlled wood puller."

Mr. Thoughtful

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about Ms. Headstrong (of course, that was before the now-assigned pseudonyms). Since then, I have been slowly going through six years of pictures of Mr. Thoughtful to put together a post about him. And since then, I have also gained in knowledge and wisdom of ways of embedding photos so that I can present these selected photos from his first 6 years of life in a handy dandy slideshow format, right here in this blog entry. So, since this guy is cuter than words can express, without further ado...



Or if you'd rather go to the album and scroll through them there, just click here.