Morel season again

It's morel mushroom season again! So far, they're still the only mushroom Ryan will eat. Here is how I cook morels, which is incidentally also how I bread chicken, or pork chops, or anything I feel needs breading.

First, you have to clean these wrinkly little morsels of goodness. Get inside 'em, there be bugs in there!

Then, I cut them in half. Otherwise the yummy breading won't cover everything.

Next, they go in a mix of flour, salt, and pepper. They get a good coating, but then I shake them off best I can.

Their second coating is some of our farm fresh eggs, beaten.

Then last they go back into a mix of flour, salt, and pepper. I like to have some of the flour be spelt or whole wheat (but not all of it! The gluten in all purpose flour is needed to help keep the breading together!)

Now they go into my saute pan in a mix of olive oil & butter. I mix the two because the olive oil raises the smoke point of the pan, but the butter adds yummy flavor. Cook on low-med until golden brown and delicious!

I almost put some garnish in the bowl for this picture, but I believe cooking should look like it actually does by those of us who aren't pros. So these may not look like much, but I promise they are creamy and delish.

With spring comes activity & 181 fluffballs

It is definitely spring around here. My favorite tree the flowering crabapple is blooming, some day perhaps I'll have a dozen of those or so in my yard.

Some of my most recent heritage bulbs are coming up, including this cute little pink hyacinth called "Double Hollyhock" also from Old House Gardens.

Ryan has been in a flurry of activity with the spring, too. Here he is treating boards with linseed oil to help them last. He also re-mulched our swampy rhubarb patch and filled in some holes in the rhubarb where chickens had beaten up rhubarb plants. Perhaps those plants were buggy and they were doing us a favor... The one thing I have learned here is that chickens love mulch. Love it. It is a nest, it is a food source, it is a place of dust baths. Mulch seldom lasts well around our farm, but we do it anyway. Why? Because it is cheap (free!) because I work at Vermeer, maker of many brush chippers; and because it is a chemical-free way to keep weeds down. Not to mention, if chickens are tearing up my mulch they are ignoring my strawberries. Layer chickens are smarter than the broiler chickens, but they do still only have the capacity to focus on one thing at a time. They are just not born multitaskers.

This week we also received our first 181 little yellow fluffballs. The question I keep getting here is: Why 181? Well, we ordered 175. But in the interest of customer satisfaction, the hatchery always throws in a random number of extra chicks in case some don't survive shipping. In our case, I don't think we've ever lost many (if any) in transit, but this way if we do the hatchery hasn't upset us by shorting us chicks. So now we have 181, and they will be this cute for about a week before they start growing and get a lot less cute.

Dinner Bell

I think it's the city kid in me. I think it's very important that a "real" farm has a dinner bell. It's silly, but it's important to me! So bless Ryan, he's been looking for a decent bell since the day we bought this place. He finally found one and today he installed it. So now when dinner is ready I can be a "real farm wife" and summon my husband by dinner bell!

Successful slipcover & deer on the move

Today I tackled a project I've been meaning to do for almost a year. I swear, no one goes through jeans like Ryan. About once a year I make a throw sized quilt out of all the jeans he wears out, but this year I made a slipcover for our cheap IKEA sofa! We got this sofa about and year ago and it was inexpensive and great; but it only came in white. White. Like white is going to survive in this house with 3 pets and a baby on the way. So we've been using one of those throws I made out of Ryan's jeans tossed over it to somewhat protect it, but it always fell off and wasn't big enough for the whole love seat. But in prep for the baby coming, I have to move all my sewing stuff including the massive pile of Ryan's jeans. This means I can either find a new way to store them in a smaller space, or just get the project done! Is the result perfect? No. Are the corners square and the seams straight? No. But did I successfully make a custom slipcover without even the internet to help and no pattern? Yes! So there.

In other news, the deer have been very active in the yard and we have had a couple within tossing distance of the house twice in the last two days. This morning they seemed oddly alarmed and antsy, and we couldn't figure out why until Ryan spotted Nermal bounding toward the deer. That's right: our little tabby cat has decided that he is a carnivore and the deer are herbivores and therefore it is his prerogative and duty to chase them. I wonder what his plans are if he catches one...

Hay Feeding

I have recently been inspired by this blog: Pioneer Woman and so I'm going to post a little bit more like she does and see how that goes. No promises about maintaining this, just an experiment. If you like it, let me know!

Ryan currently is feeding hay from the bales he had made last fall, but we're still low tech around here. So here is how to feed a small flock of sheep with a bale of hay:

Unroll your bale a little and grab a pitchfork. We searched auctions for months for a decent pitchfork, but I think we ended up just paying the $60 for this one new. It's surprisingly hard to find a pitchfork at auction in decent shape.

Move some hay onto a tarp, basically whatever you can tote around.

Pause to contemplate life while the ram and cows behind you try to figure out how to get some of this fresh hay.

Haul your tarp down the hill. The ram still wants some, so smile at him as you walk on by.

Wrestle the tarp in through the sheep pen gate. Today, only one got out so we're doing pretty good! Luckily the lazy photographer could reroute her back into the corral.

Slide the tarp out from under the hay. This one's tricky because the sheep like to stand on the tarp. So the old "pulling the tablecloth off the table while it's set" trick comes in useful.

Stand back and admire your handiwork again. That and think about how the pastures are almost ready to be done with the whole hauling hay thing and the ewes will soon have fresh grass to eat.

So now it's time to go feed the ram and cows before they bust down the fence in search of hay.

Productive quilting retreat

Last weekend I had a quilting retreat and had a very productive weekend! First, I finished the 14 place mats that I started in August from some fabric my mom bought for the purpose. People kept asking me if I really needed 14 place mats, but the answer is yes! We usually host at least that many for thanksgiving and occasionally host over a dozen for other events (like Easter or Mother's Day). I really like to host gatherings, although it always works better in the months when our sun room (poorly insulated and not on the main house's central air system) is neither freezing nor a sauna.

I also finished a baby quilt that I started at the retreat a year ago, although it really seems like a baby boy's quilt and we're expecting a baby girl. I haven't decided what to do with it yet, perhaps it will just join the stack for the next baby shower I land at or relative who has a baby.

The farm is running OK, but Ryan is working on everything double time so he gets stuff done before the baby is due at the end of April. He's been chain-sawing daily to clear room for the fencing that has to be done, and he's making great progress. We had some "feeder rage" last Friday and lost an ewe and one of our ram lambs; we think the big ram killed them. The little ewe we lost was no big deal, but the ram lamb was a real loss because we were hoping to finish him out for sale this summer. We will still have one lamb now, but that will be it.

The relentless winter & taxes

I think I'm going to remember this winter as The Relentless Winter. For those of you not living nearby us, we have a record number of days in a row with more than 5" of snow on the ground, and every time we turn around it's either more snow or ice.

On this note, we bought a new truck. We are now the proud owners of not one, not two, but three trucks. We bought another one mostly because I just don't like the way the Ford drives. It's the

truck on the left (anyone want to buy a '94 Ford with 4 wheel drive????). The truck in the middle is Ryan's grandfather's truck and is 2 wheel drive (translation: it doesn't make it up the driveway easily between November and March). The truck on the right is the "new" one and is the first truck I've driven that I like to drive! I can actually understand the whole chick-in-a-truck thing with this one.

On another note, we got our taxes almost done yesterday (I say almost because we're missing a form because companies don't have to mail them until Feb 15th this year). This picture is what it looks like when Ryan balances the business books, and it looks this way for at least a week or two. Last year he made it until August before they fell apart, which is better than 2008 when he only made it to July. Considering a vast majority of our business is done after October, we have a way to go before we keep up with things as they come. The final books say the business lost money this year, but we're just on year three so we're optimistic. If you don't count buying the cows, sheep, or water system; we came out ahead by a tiny bit. When we start selling sheep this year they will finally start paying for themselves and we are continuing toward the goal of making money at our five year mark. Bit by bit, we will make it!!