Happy Birthday Chicks!

Well, it's been a week! How time flies! And, now my little chicks think they can too. Especially the Wyandottes. They are just so fun to watch. Most of them coming running to me when they hear my voice, but, admittedly some do run the other way. (Kind of like when I walk into my daughter's middle school!) I love to watch them stretch out their long necks and chase each other around the brooder.  They even chase my fingers around like little kittens. I guess I didn't think baby chicks would be this playful.

And the Secret Ingredient is - Potato Salad!

Ok, so potato salad isn't really an ingredient, but I wanted to narrow the topic. One of the things we all usually agree on when choosing a TV channel is Food Network. And because of our somewhat competitive nature, of course we like "Iron Chef America."
So today, my lovely daughter, who has never ever asked to help in the kitchen, challenged me to a potato salad throw down. Yeah, ok, on Easter Sunday, SG decides that even though she has never made anything more challenging than a toaster waffle, she wants to make potato salad. Sounds fun.
With ham and chicken baking in kitchen stadium, we had not-so Iron Chef SG and Iron Chef Mommy-Moto.


Iron Chef SG

Each of us used Yukon Gold potatoes and boiled eggs. For her sauce, SG used Hellman's mayo, yellow mustard, and a little salt and pepper. For my sauce, I used Miracle Whip, dry mustard, onion salt, pepper, milk and sweet pickle relish. I also diced some carrot into my salad.
Our tasters were Daddy & Grammy. Daddy: he likes mustard. Right off the bat, he went for SG's yellow salad. Grammy: she liked the more "consistent sized pieces" in my salad and also the bite the dry mustard gave the dressing versus the yellow of the processed mustard. So, I guess it was a tie.
Really though, I was very impressed with SG. Her potato salad tasted just like traditional potato salad I have eaten at many family picnics over the years. And, I had a great time in the kitchen with my girl. Hopefully it was the first of many battles in our kitchen stadium.

Alton Brown he's not, but he's our favorite food critic.

From our family to yours: Happy Easter! He is risen!









Live From the Brooder...It's Saturday Night!

That's right friends, we're doing big things on the Homestead!

"They sure poop a lot!"

A Black Australorp the first day home

"They sure poop a lot Mom!" Yeah Little D, so did you, so did you. And there's 19 of them. For a boy, he's really grossed out by the chicken poop. I'm not really grossed out by the poop so much, but they don't seem to care if they're eating poop or feed, so I try to be diligent about keeping the brooder clean.
One of the best tips I got from reading the countless chicken books and websites before getting my babies was using paper towels over the pine shaving while they were little. This makes it very easy to keep a clean environment for the little fluffs.



Neighbors stop by to check out the new additions at the Homestead.



Bye, Bye Birdie

I'm very sad and broken-hearted to report we have had an untimely death in the fledgling flock. We came home from 4H last night to find one of the Buff Orpington Chicks taking her last dying breaths. SG held her and stroked her fuzz, cooing softly to her as she departed. It's really been a roller coaster ride of a day at the Homestead, we also have a sick bunny.

Chicka Chicka Wow Wow!!

The 20 lovely baby girls have arrived!

SG's already being a "Mother Hen!"

Picking the fuzzy little bundles of joy up at the farm supply store with SG.



Checking out their new digs!



A little water-cooler chit chat already!

My husband is fairly certain that I'll be sleeping on a lounge chair in the garage tonight beside the brooder.  I don't know about all that, but they are kinda hard to take your eyes off of. 
On the other hand, I found myself perusing some of favorite chicken books and websites last night "just to make sure" I had everything done. Then this morning, I checked the thermometer in my brooder to find it was only at 80 degrees!! What!? In need 95 degrees, where am I going to get 15 more degrees in the next two hours? I flew down to my friendly neighborhood hardware store to get another reflector lamp, rushed home, set it up. And two hours later? My brooder was at 81 degrees!!
Thankfully, my Mom walked in about this time. She was raised on a farm. Had a pet cow, showed sheep at the county fair, whole nine yards. Mom says, "you need to cover the end of your tank with a blanket, your losing all your heat." Oh, well why didn't I think of that? Instead, I was running around like a chicken with it's ....eww, never mind.

Mom, aka Grammy, & SG

Interesting note: SG is a member of the same 4 H club that my Mom was in almost 45+ years ago.

Getting ready for babies!

While my cousin has the nursery all ready for her son that will be here any day now (and is technically several days late), I'm still getting things set up for my peeps.  It does sort of feel like getting ready for a baby, or in my case 20 babies. These chicks need a lot of stuff! A brooder, a heat lamp, something to clip the heat lamp to, something to keep the kids and dogs out of the brooder, a feeder, a water fountain, chick starter, bedding...I think that's it. Like any expectant mom, I'm worried I forgot something important and I'm gonna have to send my husband out in a storm to get it.

But today, Big D is going to Wally World to get bleach to disinfect the brooder and feeder and stuff, and the children's play yard fencing we are going to use to keep Little D and the dogs out of the brooder. So, I'll be cleaning everything for the babies today and setting up the nursery tomorrow.  We have an expected arrival time of 10 a.m. Tuesday for the little darlings! I wish I could say the same for my cousin! Hang in there sweetie!

The breeds we are getting include: Buff Orpington, Silver-laced Wyandotte, and Black Australop

A Country Girl Will Survive!

As turkey season is upon us, SG gets a shooting lesson from Daddy.  Maybe I won't be the only one sustaining the family!

How does my garden grow? By the book!

Of course, like anyone sustaining their family with a homestead in their backyard I'm starting my plants from seeds so I'm certain no pesky pesticides are used! Well, not really, but I thought it would be fun for Little D if we planted some seeds and it would be kinda like a science lesson.  Actually, I was on a date with my husband at Wally World and say the do-it-yourself mini greenhouses and needed an excuse. Okay? That's the truth.

Little D planting Roma tomato seeds in during "science class."

Science class continues with the planting of acorns.

It still tasted ok....

You know it's true, some things just never change. Never. A look back through all of my elementary school report cards will reveal year after year of good grades followed by comments from each year's teacher that read: "fails to follow directions," and "does not read instructions before beginning assignments." How did I still get good grades? I can't explain that any more than I can explain how my flaky, butter dinner rolls turned out weighing about four pounds a piece and were more chewy than flaky. Yet oddly they still tasted pretty good with a glob of butter melting over them. Hmmm....mysteries of the universe.
Had my parents ever taken me to a doctor, and had the doctors "way back then" been inclined to label children, I'm sure I would have been diagnosed with ADHD. My mother takes every opportunity to point this out to me when I lose interest in any number of things that I start and don't finish.  Whether I have an official disorder or not, I will admit I seem to have the inability to follow instructions that has followed me well into adulthood. That is why I do not bake. I love to cook a good meal, but I leave the baking to the bakery.
That is until I found myself in a big new kitchen with a new oven and lots of time on my hands. And just wouldn't it be great if I baked bread for my little family. That's what stay-at-home mom's do right? (Yes, I know this is 2011) That's what my mom did! (Yes, I know that was the 1970s).
So of course I have my Amish baking cookbook. I also bought several other books dedicated entirely to baking bread...without a bread machine...homemade bread...from scratch, as they used to say.  Well the first issue I ran into was the terminology, it's kind of tricky.  Sometimes flour is measured by cups, sometimes by weight. Then there is rapid yeast, quick yeast and fast yeast. If I am going to be expected to follow directions I need some uniformity and I need to know if the speed of my yeast is vital to the outcome of my bread.
I figured the dinner rolls would be something easy to start with, easier than a loaf of bread. I'm not sure what intimidates me about the loaf, but I think it might be the long rise time. Next to my inability to follow directions is my inability to commit. Four hours seems like a lengthy commitment for one loaf of bread. The rolls were a quick rise dough, according to the recipe, which I swear I followed. They smelled good. They looked good. They even mostly tasted good in a chewy sort of way. They were just really, really heavy.
My mom says my house is too cold for the dough to rise properly. And now, there's another reason I can't bake homemade bread - I'm too cheap to heat my house to a temperature that's warm enough for dough to rise! So until mid-July, I guess I'll stick with cookies, I've gotten pretty good with those. Cookies don't seem to care how cold your house is. If you're in the neighborhood, stop in and I'll make some coffee and bake you some cookies. Bring a sweater.

Yes, I actually took a picture of those 4lb rolls! I texted it to some friends from my old job to prove to them that I actually was baking!

By the book...sort of

Now that I have my guide to "producing all the food (I) need on just a quarter acre" I'm curious exactly what I'll be feeding my family once this venture is operational. (Did I mention I still haven't been successful with a loaf of bread? No? A story for another day.)
Anyway, there are seven categories of food products I need to grow on my quarter acre to be self-sustaining - vegetables, fruits and nuts, herbs, grains, poultry, meat or dairy animals, and wild foods. And here are the suggested items: 12, 4 x8 foot vegetable beds; various fruit trees, grape vines, berry canes, strawberry beds, and a kiwi arbor; culinary herbs; a 25 x 50 foot patch of a single grain like wheat or oats; 12 chickens; 2 pigs and rabbits; and 2 beehives. Like I was, I know you're wondering what the harvest will be right? Don't worry, the book estimates: 50 pounds of wheat, 280 pounds of pork, 120 dozen eggs, 100 pounds of honey, 25 to 75 pounds of nuts, 600 pounds of fruit, and a ton of vegetables. Seriously, 2,000 pounds of vegetables. Ah huh.
Honestly, this just left me slightly confused, with a list of questions, and pretty sure Giant Eagle was still going to be sustaining my family for quite some time. Fruit, veggies and herbs, come on, we even grew those in town, so no issues there. The nuts and honey kinda had me scratching my head though. To me, nuts are a snack and for the life of me I wouldn't know what to do with 100 pounds of honey. I keep a little plastic bear filled with honey on hand for my daughter. She likes to drink it in hot tea when she gets a cold. My first real  concern was the wheat. My friends are having a hard time picturing me baking a loaf of bread. I'm having an even harder time picturing me grinding wheat into flour to bake that bread! But the real problem for me was the pigs. Seriously. They just smell so bad! And outside of a mound of really crispy, almost burnt bacon, I don't eat pork. And lastly, even though they avoided mentioning them in the harvest totals, the rabbits are in the meat category. I rest my case.
Some of you may think I gave up and burned the book, but not the new got-too-much-time-on-my-hands me! I'm just picking and choosing what I'm going to sustain my family with and what they're still getting full of preservatives and artificial coloring and dyes.
Obviously I'm going to have a vegetable garden. I always have a vegetable garden. Lucky for me my new backyard already has 10 raised beds. I know the book said I only needed eight, but I figure I'll need extra space for the weeds. And, my husband says he's gonna remove some "ornamental" pines and replace them with apple, pear and peach trees. My guess is we'll be supporting the local fruit markets for years to come. And, I bought some berry bushes the other day to plant along the back of our lot.
But, the biggest undertaking spurred by the book will be the chickens. Oh yes, I said chickens. In 16 days, 20 fuzzy little pullets (like my new word) will be arriving for their new life on my little ... I'm not sure what to call it...too small for a farm, plus we don't have a barn. My husband already told me I can't call it the Chicken Ranch because that one's already taken by a house of ill repute out in Vegas...anyway, my chicks are coming!!  Then, hopefully sometime in September we'll have lots and lots of eggs! And, hopefully all my friends will want to eat them because I'll probably still be eating my Eggland's Best very very white eggs that I did not see come from a chicken's butt eggs from the grocery store!

The chicken coop!!
By the way, if you think you'd like to be self sustaining and you have less than a quarter acre, don't worry. The book can tell you how to do it with one-tenth of an acre! But beware, all your meat comes from rabbits!

The impulse buy that started it all

I can't take credit for all of my bright ideas, becoming self-sustaining was definitely not on my "To Do" list when I found myself with all this time on my hands.  Since I'm not a TV watcher, I find myself on the Internet a lot. One thing led to another and somehow I made a bleary-eyed 3 a.m. impulse decision to join a cook book club.
I have always wanted to learn how to make homemade bread and rolls. Who doesn't love melting butter running down your fingers from a fresh-from-the-oven piece of fresh bread. And, who makes better bread than my grandma? The Amish. So my first book selection was naturally The Amish Cook's Baking Book.

And, with all this time on my hands and the raised-bed gardens in my new backyard, of course I am going to have fabulous vegetable gardens this summer. Well obviously I should learn to can all those tasty veggies right!? My mom always canned our garden's bounty. My brother cans hot peppers, tomatoes, other stuff I'm sure. How did I miss the lesson on canning? Oh well, book selection number two? Put 'em up! billed as a "Comprehensive home preserving guide for the creative cook."

Then I selected a book with ten million cookie recipes (Christmas was right around the corner), and the latest food tome by my husband's favorite Food Network star, Alton Brown.  With one selection left I was losing steam and interest. Then in the "You may also like" section a book with an interesting picture on the front caught my eye. A closer look at The Backyard Homestead and my destiny was set.

"Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre!" the cover promises. Really? Just a quarter acre, all the food I need? And that's not all the books suggests, I could eat fresh veggies and homemade preserves from my own garden year-round; make omelets from the eggs laid by my very own chickens; and pick fruits and berries outside my back door! I'm in!