Island Hopping and our Feast

We've been so busy relaxing with Nathan's parents and grandmother that I haven't had a chance to update the blog! They got here last Wednesday and my parents and sister arrived on Friday for a big belated thanksgiving feast. 

Bright green home grown beans and brussels sprouts - boiling before getting put into this recipe:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/brussels-sprouts-gratin-recipe/index.html

Yum.

My thanksgiving plate. I have a lot of practice at piling my thanksgiving plate for a maximum 1st helping...but I think this one took the cake. Turkey was from Nathan's work, yams, potatoes and buns were from the supermarket and pretty much everything else was grown on the farm.

After a day of recovery from stuffing ourselves, we left for a trip to the San Juan islands. On the ferry, I kept saying how I really wanted to see a fox for the first time....and look who appeared within the first half hour!

Then I said that I wanted to see a grey fox...and look who was posing in the leaves by the road:

The million dollars and orca sightings that I hoped for next didn't appear...but this unimpressed baby alpaca did.

Possibly unimpressed because his wool went towards this:

Some more fall in the San Juans:

360 degree ipad photos:

Now we're back on the farm for some more fall sun. 

Relaxing with the chickens:

Saul is growing into a gorgeous rooster.

SoZH is huge! He takes after his dad.

Zebra Head got stepped on accidentally by one of the goats when I was scaring them away from the chicken food. He wasn't putting any weight on his leg at first and we were carrying him in and out of the coop. Now he's getting around well but still limping. It seems to be his foot that's injured but it's hard to tell. Hopefully it will keep healing.

Garlic is all planted:

Magpie hanging out on my car. I decided to move it off the farm before the goats hopped up on the roof.

We made the tough decision a few weeks ago to bring Ewean in to be slaughtered. After treating her feet diligently (and since we've had her!), she started limping again on a different foot than the two that had already had issues. We checked her again and another hoof was infected...she seems to be an animal that is chronically susceptible to foot problems and we were worried that she'd continually infect the other sheep. It was hard to do since I'd let myself get a bit attached to her, but we brought her to the butcher this morning. Hard lesson learned to be very careful where you purchase livestock from!

One for Woolly Bully

There was definitely no time to update the blog this weekend. The weather changed from a rainy, grey week to extreme heat just in time for our 8 guests to arrive. It was so hot that Nathan took both ends off the greenhouse and we built Zeb and Thomas an extra shade shelter since Molly the horse was hogging the first shelter. We knew they needed another one when we saw Thomas chasing Zeb all over the field (who knows why) and then suddenly collapse, breathing really hard. Zeb didn't even look winded - maybe his stint with Lucy last week got him in shape.

While we were building the shade shelter, our guests were sitting on stumps watching us and enjoying the traditional bbq in the paddock. We were concentrating on pounding the posts in when we heard screaming. Before we even really noticed what was happening, all of our friends were inside Nathan's truck with doors and windows closed. Woolly Bully had been walking along the fence and he took a half-hearted 3-step charge at Abby (she very easily avoided him), which I admit may have been panic inducing for a newcomer to the farm. I wish we had had a camera out there...

It was also finally hot enough to swim in the creek we discovered a few months ago. We all hiked in there to swim on Saturday, then went to a nearby lake on Sunday and to the ocean on Monday. Apparently there's a lazy river nearby that the locals tube down in the summer - that's next on the list!

When we cooked dinner on Saturday it was so nice to hear things like "this is how chicken is supposed to taste!" and "I don't normally like green beans but these are delicious!".

Carrots, beans, broccoli, peas and basil...everything is growing so quickly now!

Including the "chicks". Zebra Head now crows every morning....but they still take naps throughout the day. 

They also still sleep in a pile instead of on their roosts, and try to burrow underneath each other like they would with their mother.

Preserving: the Beginning

The farm stand is selling veggies steadily now - not very much, but at least a few things sell every day. Kale is the biggest seller - more than bagged baby greens, cucumbers or lettuce. Herbs seem to sell fairly consistently, especially after I started cutting them nicely and putting them in little bags with a damp paper towel to keep them fresh. Oh, and zucchini - it sells out every time it's out there. I didn't plant very many since I heard over and over about the beginner gardener who ends up having to give away bucket loads of zucchini. We only have 3 plants now and I wish I'd planted double that. It does take up a ton of room in the garden though. 

What we are overloaded with at the moment is cucumbers! They don't stay crisp for very long so yesterday I tried making refrigerator pickles for the first time. It was pretty easy, so hopefully they taste good. I just added dill (the flowering heads apparently taste the best for pickles), garlic, onion, pepper flakes, apple cider vinegar, salt and water - enough to cover the cucumber slices. These are slicing cucumbers and not pickling cucumbers so they might not end up as crispy.

With the less crispy cucumbers I'm making relish. So far I just chopped the cucumbers up (in my fancy new food processor) with some onion and the green mush is in the fridge with salt mixed in to draw out the moisture.

Tomatoes are ripening!

Yellow cherry tomatoes - they're neon yellow right now.

Good thing I love beans! They definitely need to be picked every day - the few that I missed yesterday got huge and tough. 

Yum - baked with soy sauce, sesame oil and garlic is definitely my favourite way to eat beans.

I shamelessly use baking to lure people to the farm stand...except Nathan and I ended up eating 99% of these ginger cookies.

I've been working on halter training Oprah and Thomas (through the fence). So far, so good - I can put loops of rope around their faces and heads while feeding them and they don't freak out. I'm going to make some halters this week. If Thomas is halter trained then at least he can be restrained if we have to check him closely for anything. We'll probably end up having to make a pen, too. 

The weekend is approaching quickly...survey your kingdom while you still can, mister...

Sneaky Veggies

I went to take some photos of the tiny bush beans that are finally growing 

 and when I looked more carefully I found these! Mmm green (and purple) beans with dinner - I like them baked in the oven for just a few minutes with sesame oil, soy sauce and garlic. 

Then I was examining the cucumber plants to make sure that this wasn't happening again:

The cucumber on the right is a normal cucumber, off of one of our landlord's plants. The cucumber on the left is our first...and it was never a normal size. It started out growing that fat and when it didn't seem to be getting much longer or more normally shaped I picked it. It's on the stand right now but I'm guessing nobody will buy it so it will be sampled in our salad tonight. 

Anyway, I realized some of the vines needed to be tied up and when I did that, I found 8 beautiful cucumbers ready to be picked, completely hidden.

Just as I was writing this a lady drove up to the house to ask when we would have more eggs and to say she's been loving our veggies. We're only producing 4 eggs a day (...2 after we eat breakfast) until the chicks start laying in August.

I think we'll have some of our own chicken next week, though. These meat birds are getting huge. 

Don't worry, not you Dorothy.

These two boys will be the first to go. They're the biggest and they bite me when I top up their food.

Look at them next to Magpie!

I'm sure I'll feel sad after having raised them from chicks but at the same time, I know they couldn't have had a better life. Our friends Jess and Josh visited this weekend and they were laughing that the farm was like a chicken community center. The three separate groups come out of their coops in the morning and congregate in the same shady area every day, then they all split off to do their activities. Mother Clucker's morning activity still involves this guy:

He seemed to think my camera's shutter noise was a threat of some kind. Unfortunately, he isn't smart enough to realize that the neighbour's dog that got onto the farm and chased the hens was the real threat. He was off in the garage somewhere and did nothing to protect the girls (not that he could have done much). Luckily I grabbed the dog before any damage was done.

The sheep are getting so tame that taking photos of them is becoming difficult. I wanted some photos from far away of them in their paddock and I only managed to get this one.

The rest of the photos were "gimme some grain" close ups.

 Oprah lets me pet her now. Both lambs will coming running at full speed from anywhere when they're called and eat out of our hands. It's good that they're getting easier to handle since their ewe and ram buddies (and an extra surprise) arrive tomorrow!