Emma | KW Homestead

Author: Emma (page 28 of 36)

a chicken gets a spa vacation!

October 3, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

after the whirlwind of the wedding, i noticed that one of our bantam hens didn’t look so great. after i fed the chickens one day, i could see that she acted a little skittish around the others while everyone was eating, and her feathers looked patchy, revealing her bare skin on some places. based on her behavior, i expected that she was being picked on by the others (particularly the bantams). she didn’t seem confident enough to search out the more delicious scraps of food, and looked around the whole time she ate as though she expected to get jumped.

every now and again, one of the bantams will become an outcast for a little while, and i haven’t yet figured out why. there are certainly some dominant hens that peck at others if they want them out of the way while they’re eating, but i hadn’t seen this particular hen run up against any trouble.

look at bren’s pretty feather pattern!

i decided to catch her and put her in solitary, the way we did with sola, a chicken so named for her sad, single tail feather. catching bren was easy. she was inside the house and it was simple to corner her and get her in the net. she struggled so much, though, that it took me a little while to untangle her. once she was caught, i was finally able to examine her feather problem. first of all, she looked healthy under all of the missing feathers. she didn’t appear to have mites or any cuts or open wounds. it is possible that she’d pulled out her own feathers so she could sit on eggs, but i hadn’t yet seen her sitting on a nest, so i wasn’t sure about that. where her feathers were missing, some were growing back, and since her feathers are dark, you can really see the way that feathers grow: emerging from the hard, clear tip of the feather like a flower opening its bloom!

bren’s bare breast

bren’s feathers begin to return on her neck and chest…

for now, just to keep an eye on her, bren is in a cage by herself in the carport. i consider this the chicken spa since she gets all the food and water she wants and doesn’t get picked on at all (if that was the problem). we’ll let her spend some time in there until she grows some feathers back and then we’ll reintroduce her to the flock and see if things get a little better for her. for now, all she has to worry about is that big black dog that likes to jump at her cage as he walks by and that black cat who thinks that sleeping on top of the chicken cage is fun.

bren, enjoying her time in the chicken spa

.:.

wedding symbols continue…

October 1, 2014 / Emma / 5 Comments

as jason and i were walking around in the yard yesterday and looking at things, i noticed that a little special something was still out in the yard. we cleaned up what we thought was everything from the wedding on sunday, but i discovered a symbolic element that was left behind, becoming more meaningful since it was the last wedding remnant left.

the sun sets over our surprise…

our champagne glasses, given to us as a pair by my mother and filled with champagne by jason’s mother, were still sitting on a hidden wooden log together right beside where we took our after-wedding pictures. those are the glasses that we raised as jason’s mom toasted to our new, exciting life together, and although we drank some of the champagne for the toast, i suppose we were forced to set the glasses down while taking pictures. there they sat for three nights and three days, until we stumbled upon them again.

sounds like a scene from a fairy tale, doesn’t it? a fairy tale that ends with a magically blessed life made even sweeter by two untouched chalices, that withstood a trinity of days and nights and remained unbroken, still holding the memory of that very special toast!

what a perfect pair… solidarity!

.:.

loads of peppers and tomatoes

September 8, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

after what seemed like a very long and tiresome weekend, we were finally able to get back out in the garden and do some much needed picking!

our black plum and san marzano paste tomatoes are doing really well right now, and some of our cherokee purples are still making it.

also, the jalapenos have kicked off to an unbelievable degree (i got 20 large ones from one plant yesterday, still leaving tons of medium-sized and smaller ones)!

some of the cayennes were ripe and also some of our aji peppers (a delicious pepper that jason and i learned to love while we were in peru).

my heavy picking basket, filled with tomatoes, peppers, and some basil.

after picking,i estimated that i got about 20 pounds of these ingredients all together. i made a blended up, salsa-like concoction that we’ve frozen to use in sops and pastes in the future. it’s probably very spicy (considering the amount of jalapenos in it), so it will have to be added to other ingredients when we cook with it.

yum!

.:.

a few ways to save: wedding on the homestead

August 29, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

with our wedding less than a month away now, we’ve realized that there are many ways to save money while planning a homestead wedding like ours. some of these ideas don’t apply to traditional weddings, or indoor weddings, but they work perfectly for what we’re doing:

save on the price and hassle of renting chairs by buying hay bales and 10’x10″x2″ boards for seating. for us,renting chairs would be about $1.50 a chair plus the coordination necessary to truck 100+ seats 45 minutes away into the country and pick them up the next day (talk about delivery fees). by buying hay bales and boards we’re able to add to our collection of homestead resources: we can use the hay for mulch and the boards for building a heavy-duty structure in the future. this at only the cost of $2.50 per seat.
make your wedding favors. make it something personal from your farm, and your guests will appreciate the personal touch and the time you spent making it for them.
need cocktail tables for all of your guests to place their drinks on? try upending large metal barrels and placing a piece of larger wood on them to serve as table tops. slap a table cloth on that baby and you’ve got yourself a sturdy cocktail table.
need extra regular sized tables? well, if you have any extra doors lying around, lay them on stools or lower barrels and use them to serve your food and drinks.

just a few creative, low budget ways to have the homestead wedding that you’ve been dreaming of without the cost!

.:.

wedding prep: pruning and trimming the bushes and trees

August 25, 2014 / Emma / 1 Comment

today after work i continued my epic, month-until-the-wedding, preparation for the big day!

after i finished all of the usual chores, i decided that i felt like pruning the boxwood bushes in the front of our house. we hadn’t pruned them since we moved in, and they were looking a little wild and crazy. it was a success! this sort of thing is so fun…

trimmed bushes!

i also trimmed some lower limb off of trees in the yard and ended up using our new hedge trimmers (thanks grandma!), a pair of nippers, and a leaf rake to shake all of the trimmed branches off of the bush to be sure i hadn’t missed any spots. it was a great time, especially since bridey was decided to hangout with me!

boxwood trimming: my rake, shears, and nippers

my pal bridey, taking a nap.

.:.

getting the land ready for the wedding!

August 22, 2014 / Emma / 3 Comments

first of all, jason, my dad, and i spent last saturday cleaning out and organizing the area around the barn. it was a really long, hard work day, but extremely fun overall and rewarding. here’s what the barn looks like now (check out my post about revealing the barn to see what kind of junk was in it/around it before):

the area around the back of the barn where we’ve stacked useful items that don’t need to be kept out of the elements.

more stuff!

and more…

tomorrow my dad and i are going to do a lot of work in the yard to get the area cleaned up and looking good for the wedding. here’s what we plan on doing (hopefully we’ll get it all done!):

cleaning all of the junk out of this trailer and moving the trailer if we’re strong enough!

relocating this hugelkulture wood pile.

moving these bundles of brush and removing the leaves so they can be used in our wattle fencing.

moving all of this organic matter from around the station wagon in the front yard and finding it a new home in a compost pile.

clearing these heavy, rusty, old appliances out of the way so they’re not in view.

and if we have time: moving all of this trash/junk from a spot on our land where a trailer used to be (years ago).

so, wish us luck!

.:.

too many tomatoes (is there such a thing?)

August 20, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

do you have too many tomatoes and you need to process them before they go bad?

why, make tomato sauce, of course!!!

.:.

farm food friday: homemade cherokee purple tomato sauce!

August 15, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

we’re finally back with another edition of farm food friday, and this recipe, once again, is all about tomatoes. i know we’ve been on a posting kick about tomatoes lately, but once you have one of our cherokee purples you’ll understand why…

the other day we made some homemade tomato sauce, and although i’ve frozen a ton of tomatoes for sauce ingredients, we had enough fresh ones to make use them for our sauce.

ingredients (keep in mind that you should add as much as you desire for each of these):

using our awesome new sauce pan (it’s still shiny!).

directions:

we used our new, huge, awesome sauce pan to be sure we made a lot!
saute sliced garlics in olive oil and then add onions
once these have cooked for a few minutes, add your sliced/diced cherokee purple tomatoes (from the garden); cut the heat to medium
as this cooks begin boiling your water for the pasta
add capers, sriracha sauce, and salt and pepper to taste
let it cook down more, being careful to stir it often so the thickening tomato doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan and burn
add sliced and diced bell peppers (our’s were from the garden)
add lemon thyme and basil (also from the garden)
continue letting it cook down and add a few pinches of parmesan cheese to thicken the sauce and make it a bit creamier… this also adds bite.

delicious cherokee purple tomato sauce!

as i’ve mentioned before, cherokee purples are sweeter tasting and less acidic, so i find that there is no need to add anything to the sauce to tone down natural acidity. that makes this dish a delicious and easy-to-make meal any day of the week!

and the great thing about cooking in our kitchen: there’s always leftover scraps to feed to our flock of chickens!

this recipe’s scraps… chickens here we come!

next up… making more of this sauce and freezing it in ready-to-go containers.

.:.

growing tomatoes: why we love our tomato varieties

August 13, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

let me start by saying that we will always grow tomatoes… no matter what! we are in love with freshly grown tomatoes! whether we’re pickling green ones or eating BOT sandwiches, we’ll certainly have tomatoes on the vine.

they are an amazing food: versatile, delicious, and if you pick the right variety, super duper nutritious.

our very favorite slicing tomato, one that i grew up eating and that we’ve recently realized also makes an excellent pasta sauce is the cherokee purple. supposedly the seeds from the cherokee were passed on from the cherokee tribe beginning before the 1900s, and have been grown ever since. this makes it an heirloom tomato, and it sure is great. dark purple/red in color with a green top when ripe, we consider it to be a very meaty, dense tomato that tastes less acidic than your average tomato. this taste profile makes it fantastic on a tomato sandwich, especially when the slices are thick. it’s also great in soups and sauces since the sweetness of the tomato really shines through.

the ripened base of the cherokee purple, champion of tomatoes!

the ripened base of a cherokee purple, champion of tomatoes!

the top of the cherokee purple (yes, it’s ripe… just cut around the very green spots). the brown lines are where the tomato burst open from all of the rain we got the last two days. you can see that the spots have healed over naturally.

we’re also growing two types of paste tomatoes, the san marzano and the black plum paste tomato. jason and i both feel that the black plum is the “cherokee purple” of paste tomatoes. colored much the same and similar in its less acidic flavor, it’s also super creamy. we were surprised by this, but i guess that’s what makes it a great paste tomato… being creamy instead of watery!

san marzano on the left, black plum on the right.

the san marzano is a bright red tomato that is also creamy. together, these two paste tomatoes give us the best of both worlds: the flavor of the black plum is superior but the san marzano seems to be more fruitful and grows larger tomatoes.

this tomato triad is an exciting combination for future soups and sauces. we’ve already frozen some mixed batches, with all three tomato types included. stay tuned for a farm food friday fresh tomato sauce recipe!

.:.

rainy day reflections

August 11, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

well, finally we’re getting a steady, lengthy, solidly wet rain. i feel like it’s been months since the garden swales have filled up with water, and the moisture in the air is thick and sticky (luckily the weather has turned a little cooler). as i was walking around today i noticed that everything was super wet and saturated, which can only come from a nice, long rain. it must have rained most of the day when i was at work and coming home i found muddy puddles all around the yard. the geese seemed perfectly happy in the rain, either sleeping under their tarp or swimming in their pool. the chickens, on the other hand, didn’t have a great day. since they’re not water birds like geese they look hilariously scruffy and horrible when they’re wet. they hid in their house most of the time, but came running out into the rain every time they thought i was coming by with their food.

the cement floor of the carport always starts to sweat when there is a lot of moisture in the air, and i noticed that some decorative wood slices had begun to grow a beautiful green fungus right beside the bark. this made me think about our shittake mushroom logs and whether today’s weather has given them a boost in colonization… hopefully they’ll begin fruiting soon!

this wood grows an extra decoration!

perhaps the greatest thing about the rain is the fact that we don’t have to water the garden! plants that are under the carport can come out for a drink and as i said, the swales filled up. so did our little frog pond right by the garden and bolt enjoyed drinking out of it as we went on his afternoon walk.

the ferns that hang in the carport get brought out for a long drink of rain water.

tonight jason and i are hearing a frog chorus that is much louder than what we’ve heard any other night.

and on top of all of this, rain is just plain cozy. it’s a time for introspection and taking it slow. i love rainy days!

.:.

KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013