because now that summer is over, clearly, it's time to build the summer kitchen

the summer kitchen was on the to-do list, but it was very close to the bottom. however, after we were blessed with the gift of an industrial propane stove, we decided that we should build the summer kitchen sooner, rather than later, in order to be good stewards of God's provision.


Dave paced out the walls of the summer kitchen, making it a nice size. then we made it just a bit bigger, (14' x 14') since that's how things seem to go around here! (just last week, B told Dave he needed to make the tractor shed a little bit bigger! even though he built it 33% bigger than he originally intended, it's still too small!)

besides the wonderful blessing of our stove, i also wanted to get the kitchen done in time for turkey butchering November 23. it looks so much more professional to be butchering on stainless steel counters with a sink and running water, as opposed to working on a wobbly card table in the side yard...

Dave and G quickly got the posts set, and the framing done.

next was the rafters and green tin roof.

already we can see so many advantages to having this building- butchering pigs, chickens, deer and turkeys, canning/freezing, church picnics, and as a staging area for the produce both for the CSA and farmer's market.

here Dave and G are digging out the extra dirt, preparing for a layer of river bottom stone.

now, most people when they look at this window, would think that it's a wonderful idea to have a little window up high, for ventilation.

however, if you're like most people, you would be wrong. this little window is for shooting groundhogs. the view of this window is that of the lower garden, affording Dave a perfect spot to hide out and shoot those pesty little varmints!

A and B call this little attic/storage area their tree house. already they've had snack and play time up there.

of course the girls are happy to ride along with daddy in the tractor or wagon. the bucket on the tractor sure makes it handy to load those nice gravely stones. Dave and G spread the stones over the floor of the kitchen, making it a good base to pour the concrete onto.

lastly, Dave rented a tamper, and tamped the living daylights out of the stones on the floor. this way (in theory) the cement slab will not settle and crack.

tomorrow we have 4 yards of cement coming, along with 2 friends and their wheelbarrows to help pour the cement. along with fresh home made donuts and coffee, it should be a pretty interesting day!

an abundant harvest!

last week we dusted off fixed the potato plow, and put it to good use! way back in May, we planted a total of 300 pounds of potatoes. (yes, you read that right!) and at the end of our season, still had about 75 pounds left to dig.

this year i got to drive the tractor. there were 3 rows to dig: almost a whole row of Superior, a white potato. there were also 2 complete rows of kennebec, a white keeper potato.

the ground was a tiny bit wet to be digging potatoes, but we dug in the opportune window between rain showers. (another variation of "make hay while the sun shines")

Dave and A rode on the back of the plow to keep an eye on things.

the rows in the lower garden are slightly longer than 100 feet. all the other rows ( we planted 8 other rows of potatos: the ill-fated blue, yukon gold, red Pontiac and another row of Superior) were dug by hand and sold; either in the CSA boxes, at the produce stand or the farmer's market.



the potato plow makes quick work of those 100 feet! the plow digs up the row, and scoops up the potatoes onto the first conveyor. the potatoes rattle along and plop down onto the second conveyor, and then gently tumble off the back: all in a nice, neat row.

we all helped pick up the potatoes, sorting as we went. all these crates are about 3/4 full of kennebec potatoes. we also got 4 crates of the superior, which we'll eat first. last year we had our own fresh potatoes until the middle of April, (we store them in the crates in the cellar) meaning that we were only on a "potato fast" from mid-April until early July, when we dug our first potatoes.

I'd say we're on track for that again this year.

and then some!

the amazing chicken factory!

one of our recent acquisitions was a chicken plucker. we were looking for a drum plucker, but when we found this one on Craig's list for $100, Dave decided that it would work just fine.

we did quite alot of work on it: new "fingers", new paint, motor, plug and switch. so, the final cost was somewhere around $don'tevenaskbecauseyoudon'treallywanttoknow.

however, it works like a charm! Dave is the only one who has run it so far, since it spins really fast, and you really have to hold onto that chicken! (or else he'll go flying and be spit out the back and bottom of the drum!)

first, the chicken needs to be scalded (it goes without saying that the chicken is already dead...) in water that is no more than 145 degrees. then Dave flops him (i keep saying "him" because if you'll remember, all the meat birds we raise are the Cornish cross cockerels) onto the plucker, and holds on for dear life! pretty soon, 97% of the feathers are removed.

next in our little assembly line is G, and he tidies up the bird, removes the feet, crop, tail and head. he also removes the neck, and then passes the bird onto me.

i gut him, do any final cleaning and then rinse him off for the final time. i tuck the chicken into a neat looking package, and then I'll weigh and bag him. (it makes it much easier to have the chickens weighed before the customers come to pick them up- it goes so much smoother and faster that way.)



the chicken plucker has saved us untold hours, and even earned us money. with the addition of the skins and neck (tucked into the cavity) our birds have consistently weighed slightly over 5 pounds, with a few even over 6 pounds!



our goal is to continue to improve our product and cut down our cost to raise them. the chicken plucker has at least helped with the first part of that objective!

we have so much to do, that i think i'll take my nap first, just so i can cross that off my list....

* build another pig tractor. (did i mention that we got 2 more pigs?)

* build a 5X5 brooder pen for the 100 cornish X cockerels that are coming April 14.

* build at least 12 10'X4' raised garden beds

* maintenance and *fix* tiller

* buy seeds: beans, cukes, sunflower, corn, summer and winter squash....

* buy 250 lb potatoes: 100 lb. kennebec, 50lb. red Pontiac, 50lb. Yukon gold and 50lb. purple variety.

* buy 15lb. onion sets: 10lb. purple onions, 5+lb. white onions, and 5+lb. yellow keeper onions.

* drywall upstairs.

* finish wiring upstairs

* plan several quilt classes for BF.

* finish girls' room, so they can move upstairs in the spring after M comes home.

* clean out high tunnel

* build a few more chicken hoop houses.

* hatch out 42 buff orpingtons in Dave's incubator (Christmas gift) so we'll have a new flock of laying hens.

* find, and hatch out some turkey eggs. also some ducks.

* till, and plant cold weather crops in the high tunnel.

* plow and disc lower garden.

* buy, and butcher another (full grown) pig. our sausage is almost all gone, and we need (would like to have) enough pork to last us until we butcher again next December.

* get manure for raised beds. fortunately, I've lined up a (dump?) truck that we can borrow. this task will take several days, and many trips.

* start 2 raised beds of strawberries.

* Dave would like to plant raspberries this year.

looks like somebody decided to take the day off!

it's been very cold here~ the thermostat is stuck at 10 degrees, it seems.

dave came up from the chicken coop thsi morning with this tiny egg.

maybe the chicken decided to take a "half day" ?

it's a good thing that we have this tiny frying pan. it's just the right size!

it was a rough week for the livestock...

it was a really busy week here, with a lot of blood and gore being flung around...

after finishing up with the 3 deer that we got (1 roadkill and 2 on the first day of deer season) it was time to launch right into our next project~ butchering the pig!

she was slaughtered on Tuesday, and after hanging all night (in the 20 degree weather) we butchered her on Wednesday.

i plan on doing a post about our experiences~ it was not nearly as difficult as you might imagine to butcher a pig, and we have lots of fresh meat. the hams and bacon will be ready by Christmas, and we're really looking forward to that!

while we were on a roll, we went ahead and butchered 20 chickens on Thursday. only 30 more to go this next week, and then we're all done for the season! our freezers will soon be groaning...

i, for one, will be relieved to be done. we've been raising chickens since last march!

also, there are pig butchering pictures up over on facebook, so if you're a friend, you can see them now... here's a link, even if you're not:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=37399&id=1559330479&l=50262d8545

and that nasty pig stomach is still in my fridge. i think I'll just chuck it- i have to draw the line somewhere!

exotic bird spotted at local birdfeeder!

this morning we looked out the window, and were amazed to observe a rare sighting of an unusual bird!

of course, it's just our pesky indian runner ducks gobbling up all the wild bird food. ironically, the ducks have the very same cracked corn in their little hoop house (seen in the background), but they seem to think that pilfered corn is much tastier!

happy hunting grounds!

yesterday was the first day of rifle (shotgun?) deer hunting season. Dave was eager and ready to go out hunting. he has a tree stand right down below the lower garden. while the kids and i left for Harrisburg to meet the bus back to BJU, Dave was off hunting in the rain.

and after several (many?) years of not getting any deer at all~ sometimes not even seeing a deer all day~ he got 2 deer: a doe and a button buck, and was back up in the house by 8AM! now that's what i call efficiency!

the girls were up, and Dave got them dressed and took them down into the woods to "help" gut the deer. they were very excited for their daddy, and were happy to pose for some pictures~ my two little rednecks!


the doe was much larger then the other. the button buck was probably this year's fawn. ( i made Dave some tenderloin steak for lunch, and it was definitely tender!) i cut all 4 loins out of the deer and made them into steaks.



the remainder of the deer meat we cut off of the bone. i canned 14 quarts of venison for stew, and the rest we made into burger, using our brand new meat grinder, a 1HP Sam Baer. we ran the meat through the grinder twice- the first time using the 3/8" blade,

the second time we used the 1/4" blade. the meat grinder did a really nice (and quick) job, and had no problem handling the bigger pieces of meat.

deer meat is really easy to can, and I've heard that it tastes very tender. we just cubed the meat into about 1" chunks. i heated the meat, so it wasn't going in the pressure cooker cold. after washing my jars and sterilizing the lids, i hot packed the meat into the jars. i added 1 teaspoon salt, and filled the jars to the shoulder. i added hot broth, and ran a wooden spatula around the jars to get out all the air bubbles. then i pressure cooked them at 10lb. for 1 ½ hours. since i have 2 pressure cookers, it was pretty painless, and relatively fast.

thankfully i had some freezer wrap on hand, and it was almost enough to do the 16 1½ pound burger packages that we got.

with the 14 jars of stew venison, the 16 packages of ground meat and the 3 packages of tenderloin that i froze, we have 33 meals that the family can eat!

I'm sure pleased about that!

and no, i don't feel guilty for eating Bambi. remember how much of my garden he and his mamma ate this year? sunflowers, beans, summer squash, beets, carrots, winter squash and sweet potatoes.

so the way i figure it, we're even.

but just barely!

it's got to be some kind of bloggy record!

can you believe it ~ we actually built another outbuilding without me giving you an agonizing blow-by-blow (with pictures) to accompany every board and nail that went into the construction!

wow. like i said ~ some kind of record!

we need a woodshed to store all our wood for the winter- Dave estimates that we burn 35 face cords of wood each heating season. (which around here can truly be from September to April!)



originally we had planned on building the shed over top of the stove, and running the chimney up through the roof of the wood shed.

that's until we heard the startling story of what happened to friends of ours from church: it seems that after the stove was fed and stoked for the afternoon, the door was not shut. this led to a massive buildup of gasses at the top of their wood shed, which in turn lead to a massive (if not impressive!) explosion which sounded like a train barreling down the tracks at full steam.

after hearing this story at the church picnic, Dave decided that he didn't want to chance the same thing happening at our house.

even if it is covered by insurance!


we bought a truck load of logs, and Dave worked at cutting that into lengths.

with the tractor, G and N, it didn't take long to get all that wood cut and stacked. the wood shed will hold only about half of what we burn, so the rest will be stored somewhere else, under tarps.


we decided to get another truck load of logs, and in addition to being fairly green, the logs were much bigger than the previous load.

so yesterday Dave brought home an early Christmas present for G: a gasoline powered wood-splitter that he borrowed from a friend at work. (as opposed to the old-fashioned way: a son-powered wood splitter. with really great muscles. named G.)

it's helpful to have 2 people working the splitter, and in just 1 hour this morning, Dave and G split the same amount of wood that would have taken nearly all day by hand!

the girls and i took out a snack for the hard-working wood crew, and admired their work.


and reflected on how true that old adage is- "he who heats with wood warms himself twice"

Thursday's Livestock and Garden Report ~ Week 21

it's been a busy week, with the garden finally starting to produce. i can brag about an impressive list of veggies that we've been harvesting: onions, peppers, summer squash, zucchini, tomatoes, beans and of course the old stand by, potatoes.

we've picked green beans several times this week, being diligent to stay current on the picking. the beans are of course much better that way. when the green beans/ground cover ripens in the UG, there will be tones of beans! probably way too many~ but we'll just sell the extra, and feed the extra of the extra to the pigs.

the ducks have fallen out of favor this week. although we enjoy watching them wander through the yard and play in the puddle, they did a very naughty thing. (as A would say!) i had planted my second crop of peas, counting on the cooler weather and delayed frost to harvest my own instead of buying. they (the peas) were coming up nicely, and all 6 of the double rows were about 3" high. one afternoon soon after i let them out, the ducks were observed eating straight down the rows of tender pea shoots! they were quite happy, wiggling their tail and muttering among themselves. almost as if they were saying thank-you! thank you for planting a row for each of us. thank you for putting them in such a neat and straight line. grrrr! well, fortunately for me and my family, the local grocery store had a sale on this week: Bird's Eye peas ~ 1 pound, 1 dollar. so my freezer is stocked with peas, and since that's what i set about to do, i guess i don't have much to complain about.

it was a rough week for the meat birds, too. we lost 13 or so, which was quite a blow. it's a combination of heat, water, crowding and stupidity. (of the birds, i mean!) that just reinforces to Dave and i that we need to take a much more active role in supervising the livestock and instructing in proper care. but we can console ourselves with a pithy little nugget that a farmer friend shared with me after church on Sunday: "if you have livestock, you're going to have deadstock." how true, how true...

we are harvesting tomatoes, although the plants are quickly dying off. they look really terrible in the garden, but as long as I'm getting some tomatoes, I'll let them suffer through. we've been eating fresh garden salsa and i even made some spaghetti sauce. I'll be able to make many more quarts of sauce, just not in the big quantities that i prefer.

N, G, A and B helped me transplant, mulch and water all the cauliflower and broccoli that we put into the high tunnel. I'm holding out hope that we'll be able to harvest these veggies, too! (we will not put the new plastic on the high tunnel until it gets much cooler, as the cauliflower and broccoli prefers the cool weather.)

this week we purchased 8 of the big round bales of hay for mulch. today G and Dave were working at spreading a layer of hay over the parts of the LG that are done. the LG is pretty much done producing, but alot of the potatoes are still in the ground, so of course we can't mulch there yet. the plan with the hay is to improve the soil for next year. some portions of the LG have had 2 rounds of buckwheat, and now the hay. hopefully next year we will see an improvement in the soil fertility.

which leads me to think that maybe, just maybe, we can work our way up to being a CSA, providing food for 10-12 other families besides ourselves. somewhere between Dave's pessimism and my optimism lies the reality. as we continue to work together to improve our little spot of soil, we learn and grow together. we've been inspired by this blog this week, and keep thinking, maybe we can do this after all! (and we cant' whine about living in zone 5, because they do, too!)

I'll leave you with a few recipes, so you can enjoy your own garden's bounty!

Spaghetti Sauce

½ bushel tomatoes (roma is best)

3 lb. onions

4 red peppers

2 green peppers

1 stalk celery

1-2 T parsley

2 T sweet basil

2 T oregano

1 ½ c. sugar

process tomatoes. (wash, cut out bad spots, boil and run through the squeezo) put onions, peppers and celery through food processor. combine with tomatoes and sugar and bring to gentle boil on stove. BE CAREFUL not to over boil, or your sauce will get dark and bitter. (don't ask me how i know this, just trust me.) if you're using dried herbs, you can add them at the beginning, but wait until the end if you're using fresh.

prep your jars and lids, and have your hot water canner already boiling. into each quart jar add 1 T lemon juice. hot water bath 30 minutes.

(this sauce is thinner than the store bought that has all sorts of nasty thickening chemicals added to it, but i often add 1 can of tomato paste, especially when I'm making spaghetti)

Garden Fresh Salsa

chop up a bunch of tomatoes. (about 2 cups) if you're using beef steak toms, squeeze out some of the juicy stuff in the middle. salt semi-generously, and set aside.

now cut up equal amounts of green peppers, purple onions, cucumbers and even summer squash if you're feeling particularly brave (or healthy)

drain the tomatoes and combine all the chopped veggies. add lime juice and chopped fresh cilantro. serve immediately with tortilla chips. yummy!

we enjoyed an evening at the county fair

we worked really hard while putting the new roof on our house, so we were especially looking forward to relaxing at the county fair for an evening.

it's fun to take the whole gang and go see all the sights: animals, quilts, people and food!

the baby goats were both curious and friendly.



looks like this one would like to sample the juice from A's cup!




baby B is so much like her daddy. she was almost mesmerized by this tractor, and was fascinated by the tire!

this is the tractor that I want! how much easier it would be to keep my garden weeded and under control! (and how much fun would it be to drive a cool little tractor like that?!)

a trip to the fair would just not be complete without the required dosage of cotton candy. B was intrigued with how it just melted away in her mouth.

we were so pleased to see that both our Yukon Gold and Red Pontiac potatoes received first place! now we can honestly advertise at our produce stand that we have the best potatoes in Bradford county!

i entered 8 things in the home arts section of the fair, and 7 of them received a ribbon. i was disappointed to not have received any blue ribbons for first place, but then there's always next year!

"Skwaps to Waps" ~ a day with our church family

on the 4th Wednesday of every month, we leave the guys at home to fend for themselves and the girls and i head to church for a wonderful day of fellowship and encouragement. Scraps to Wraps is our church's women's sewing circle and we work on making quilts to share with those in need: both locally and around the world.

i enjoy the time with other women from my church family, and always come away refreshed (but exhausted!)

Lorraine donated all this fabric, and after her mother cut it all into squares, M had fun helping sort out the colors.

even baby B had fun with the sorting, and A was right along side lending a hand. after we had the squares sorted by color, M and i paired them up into 4 patch squares for Lorraine to sew.

most of our quilts we tie, and it's surprising how many we can get done in one day: sometimes as many as 6!

i especially love that all the women are loving and tender with A and B. with no local family to lavish them with hugs and attention, the little girls are bonding with some of the older women in our church.

it seems so old-fashioned and wholesome to have the girls sitting under the quilt frame playing quietly. just like a scene straight out of little house on the prairie!

the girls are right alongside us all day long as we work: these are the future quilters!

no matter the housework, schooling or gardening to be done on Scraps to Wraps day, you'll find us in at church sewing. while we go to help make quilts to comfort those in need, we are really the ones who are benefiting: with love, fellowship and deeper friendships.