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Category: her thoughts (page 19 of 21)

farm food friday: oma’s green bean casserole

March 21, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

my mom makes the best green bean casserole, partly because she always uses green beans from my dad’s garden and partly because, well, she doesn’t open up any cans while making it–she makes it from scratch. this is not the first or the last of oma’s recipes that you’ll see on our blog (oma is the german name for grandmother–the name my mom wants to be called once grandkids arrive).

i just tried my hand at recreating her recipe a few days ago, and i can say that i think i did a pretty good job. maybe you’re thinking, “it’s not thanksgiving… why the sudden enthusiasm about green bean casserole?”

well, as is the tradition with farm food friday, i try to share some recipes that highlight a certain homestead ingredient that we (or you) might have a lot of or might just really love eating! hence the green bean casserole idea.

a little bit about my love for green beans: it started so early that i can always remember loving them, even as a young child. i loved them so much, in fact, that in my school days i would always say that green beans were my favorite food when asked. all the other kids would look at me like i was crazy, since they had all said pizza, ice cream, or spaghetti. i also can’t seem to write or type green bean as two words, and i have to backspace and correct myself each time because instead i type greenbean. i don’t think my interest in compound words is to blame, rather that i’ve always imagined that green beans are the beans, worthy of mono-word-dom. all other beans are secondary to me, and i imagine they always will be.

so now that you know what sort of greenbean fanatic i am (yes, the vote is in and i can now resume using greenbean rather than green bean), you might be even more interested in this week’s farm food friday recipe. yum!

the ingredients:

3 pints of greenbeans (grown in our garden, snapped, boiled, and frozen in their own broth since september). greenbean broth is super nutritional, and once you use the greenbeans for the casserole, i recommend saving the broth for drinking later. it’s best when warm!
1 or 1 1/2 large onion(s)
10 garlic cloves
6 medium or large baby bella mushrooms (optional). once our shiitake mushrooms come in we will be using them instead!
milk (i use unsweetened coconut milk, but whatever you use for baking or cooking will be fine)
olive oil or butter
flour
garlic powder
salt and pepper
soy sauce
french fried onions (optional)

the gear:

a large saucepan
a medium-sized casserole dish
large spoon, whisk, knife
cutting board

our greenbeans, frozen and preserved since september 2013

diced onions!

sauteing veggies–after adding the garlic and mushrooms

the casserole mix, before baking!

the directions:

before you begin cooking, drain the liquid from your greenbeans (but save it!) to have them ready to mix in when the time comes.
dice and saute the onions (in plenty of olive or butter) on medium-low for about 10 minutes. add some salt and garlic powder while stirring.
dice the garlic gloves and mushrooms and add them once the onions appear transparent. add a couple dashes of soy sauce while stirring.
at this point you will begin to make the rue in the same pan as the vegetables. the key is to keep the ratio between the olive oil/butter and the flour equal. so, add as much of these ingredients as you like (depending on how much liquid you would like your casserole to have) but pay attention to your ratio and be sure to create enough rue so that once you stir in the greenbeans you still have some stir-ability. i believe i added about 1/3 cup of flour to my pan, and a little bit less than 1/3 cup of olive oil (since there was already a good bit in the veggie mix). use your whisk to stir this in well.
add a couple more dashes of soy sauce and a bit more garlic powder, salt, and pepper.
add around 1 cup of your milk and continue to stir the concoction with the whisk.
this is the time to check your rue; taste it if you’d like. add any more of the spices or more flour, oil/butter, or milk if you feel like the recipe needs more balance.
when you’ve decided the rue and veggies are good-to-go, stir in your pints of greenbeans.
once the greenbeans are mixed evenly among the other ingredients, transfer all to your ungreased casserole dish. spread the mixture evenly throughout the dish and smooth the top.
bake in the oven for 40 minutes, at 350 degrees.
briefly remove the casserole from the oven and sprinkle as much or as little french fried onions over the top that you like (i put a ton of them on top, while my mom doesn’t put any).
bake in the oven for another 10 or 15 minutes, depending on your desired crunch factor.
serves 6-8 average folks, or 3 or 4 gluttonous jasons and emmas. enjoy!

p.s. an added bonus to this recipe… it tastes even better as leftovers, since the rue and vegetable flavors have had time to meld. next time i plan to make a double batch so that it lasts longer in our house than just for 2 meals.

.:.

from plant to pesto: basil and its promises

March 18, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

basil, basil, basil!

rare is the person who doesn’t use basil in their cooking! jason and i use basil in heavy quantities, especially in soups, beer breads, pesto pasta salads, and most especially fresh in stir fries during the summer and fall!

photo courtesy of bethcoll

although we may think of basil as an italian herb, it originates from india! there are different sorts of basil, of course; the variety that we grow and that most people use in italian cooking is called “sweet basil.” the specific “sweet basil” variety that we planted in 2013 and plan to plant again this year is called genovese.

basil also has health benefits (of course!). the essential oils found in basil have been found to be antiviral, antimicrobial, antifungal, and might even fight cancer. exciting! it certainly is delicious, and basil and its sibling species are cultivated by people all over the world.

the time is nearing for us to plant another round of basil “bushes,” and we still have a good bit left of our harvest from last year! this is because our processing and storing of last year’s crop was simple and not time consuming. therefore we were able to store it all without wasting any.

my mother taught me how to make pesto many years ago, and making pesto can be a great way to store basil (she uses walnuts instead of pine nuts), but she also taught me an even simpler and more long-term versatile way to “keep” our basil for months and months. this way doesn’t require that you purchase parmesan, nuts, or other important pesto ingredients.

easy = basil + olive oil & put it in the freezer!

most of our basil is stored this way, with a few bags of dried basil (which is also super easy!) still left.

to freeze your basil, all you need to do is wash the leaves and pull them from the stems. jason and i prune our basil bushes periodically and process a little as we go through the growing season, but at the end we simply cut the entire basil bush and wash the whole bush with our shower’s spray nozzle. we have a huge colander (3 feet in diameter) that works great for when we are spraying the bushes down. then we set to pulling all of the leaves off by hand. the plus side: your fingers smell like delicious basil for days!

after we have gallons of loose basil leaves, we put them in our cuisinart food processor with some olive oil and blend away, making sure to add enough oil so that the mixture is a little bit slushy. this helps the basil freeze better and staves off any freezer burn that might happen after months in the ice box.

last september’s frozen basil: bagged and jarred

last september, after the big, last harvest, we stored the basil paste in two different ways: in small glass jars and in small ziploc bags (rolled and sealed to be sure all of the air was pushed out). out of these two storage methods, i much prefer the ziploc bags. here’s why: when i’m making a soup, pasta, or stir fry, all i have to do is get one of the bags out of the freezer, break off as mush basil-paste-ice-cube as i want, and put the rest away. this means i don’t have to thaw the paste before use, as i do with the paste that’s in the little glass jars. so convenient!

currently, we are trying to consume all of our stored basil before the fresh basil comes in. because, one thing is for certain: no matter how easy and versatile frozen or dried basil may be, the best is always fresh!

.:.

walking dodger’s way: a perimeter path around our land!

March 17, 2014 / Emma / 2 Comments

yesterday jason and i did something that i have been fantasizing about for months… we finally chose, marked, and pruned a path around the perimeter of our land! even though it was raining a cold drizzle during most of the adventure, it was excellent fun. some of the reasons i have been chomping at the bit to get my new trail marked:

spring is about to hit and i really wanted to have the trail marked and somewhat cleared before all of the foliage came back in and obscured the best path options. jason carried the bush ax and i carried the long-handled nippers and green marking tape. we pruned small tree limbs out of the way and pushed some dead wood out of the the path as we went, and i marked trees that were directly to the left side of the trail. this was so that i can remember the path until i get more used to it and so that visitors know where they are going if they decide to strike out on their own!
i recently started running again and unlike my other attempts over the last decade to get motivated and stick with it, i really feel excited about it this time. i thought that getting my trail marked and thoroughly “beaten down” before the undergrowth threatens to block the way would really keep me excited about running. i can also imagine how much cooler exercising will be in the summer under the shade of my very own canopy!
as i discovered this weekend, the ticks have arrived (tick spring break ’14! what, what!). they have not shown up in mass yet, and i only found 2 crawling on me because i was sitting down in the leaves at the edge of our yard. but before they show up in numbers, i wanted to do all of the limb bumping and leaf shaking that i could (ticks like to wait in bushes and smaller trees for an animal to bump it… then they jump off onto the animal).
for the wedding, of course. we really wanted to have some developed walking trails available for the wedding guests to be able to explore the different portions of our land. we tried to make it a scenic and not-too-strenuous route so that everyone (even running emma) could enjoy it!

first we started by the house and marked the path through what we call open woods, a portion of our land that has large hardwoods and very few pines. There is very little undergrowth here and it has nice open spaces for walking and looking down towards the pond.

walking in open woods with jason’s family in early 2014

then the path goes down to the pond, curves up the hill slightly, and takes you right by the longest side of the pond where the mimosas will be blooming and where the frogs can already be heard singing lovely songs!

the pond–the site where jason officially asked me to be his life partner

the path then leads into an already existing path that is framed by pine trees and littered with pine needles (this is the small portion of our land that always reminds me of a traveling scene in the lord of the rings films). this path is actually the top of the dam.

it goes out into a small clearing and then cuts back into our largest portion of woods that borders an even larger pond. it goes in the gulley for a while, through stove cove (named for the old rusting stove sitting in the middle of it) and starts to climb up the side of our largest hill towards areas that overlook the larger pond below. during this portion of the path, you can see other landmarks that we’ve named: the hanging tree, a pine that has snapped off from it’s base but is weirdly held in its place by adjacent pines and looks like it is floating vertically in air 12 feet off the ground; finger tree–also called hand tree–that has 5 trunks coming out of one stump with one trunk emerging from the stump closer to the ground (and thus looking like a thumb and 4 fingers), and bo bo tree, a large, fallen tree that we originally thought was struck by lightning and so we named it after bolt.

hanging tree–what a crazy site!

bo bo tree is at the highest point in our land, and after going past this tree, the path curves back a bit in the direction of the house and tours the plateau, an interesting flat and wooded area that would be great for building a little cabin one day.

from there, the path goes downhill into a gully (that in another direction eventually connects to stove cove) and starts to climb uphill through running cedar, a lovely portion of forest that is blanketed with running cedar vines year-round. the path follows a natural deer trail through this area and eventually spits out into a very shady pine forest.

as you travel through this pine forest, the trees begin to get larger and less are standing. i’ve given this section of our land the name drunken pines, named after a pablo neruda poem and since so many of the pine trees have fallen or are leaning (i would say maybe half of the trees!). this part of the trail emerges at the edge of a large area on our land that was a tobacco field about 7 years ago, and has since hosted small pines and blackberry vines.

the trail leads around this old field and right beside the old tobacco dryer and drying racks that still sit and wait for a better purpose…

our old tobacco dryer… maybe a future tiny winery?

by this time those on the trial have sight of the house and yard and the path cuts down bridey’s run for a little while and right past the spot where we are about to plant a lot of fruit trees and where we are thinking of getting married. from there, the path leads right up to the house!

and… a little history about bridey’s run: it is an old road (wide path) that goes from our paved road down our property until the beginning of our pond’s dam, where it dead ends. this straight run down has been titled bridey’s run because bridey, our 15-year-old dog likes to run down this path. the only (comical) problem with this is that once she gets going, her old legs can’t stop and she “bunny hops” all the way down to the pond! so hilarious.

so this is what we did this weekend, and it was great fun! we’ve named this perimeter trail around our land dodger’s way because the first time we ever walked the entire property our cat dodger came with us, meowing all the way. he even came with us again this weekend, despite the fact it was raining! that’s a sign for sure; that dodger’s way is going to be a “good luck” path for many years to come.

.:.

pineapple plant: a delicious gift!

March 12, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

my birthday was last week and one of my co-workers, who i admire very much, gave me a pineapple plant! amazing!

this might make me sound ridiculous, but i really had no idea that another pineapple (Ananas comosus) could grow from the top of your old pineapple! my parents and i did do interesting growing experiments when i was a kid; with avocado, celery, or potatoes, but never with tropical fruits. we live in zone 7 (while the pineapple plant likes zone 9) and so i suppose my parents never thought that they would be able to keep a living pineapple plant alive. so, i was excited to learn more about this super cool (and sharp) bromeliad!

my new pineapple plant!

first of all, the pineapple plant needs warm weather and should never be allowed to be exposed to temperatures less than 20 degrees. this means that to grow it in our area, we will need to keep it inside or in a greenhouse. my plan is to keep it inside near a very sunny window until true spring and summer hit and then give it some time outside in the bright sun. it also likes soil that is somewhat moist so i expect i’ll need to water it at least once a week while inside and every few days while it’s outside basking in the sun.

it is great to have this plant as an addition to our homestead; pineapple is rich in manganese and vitamin c, and the juice can help breakdown and digest protein. my mother always says that some pineapple for dessert is a great thing for aiding in digestion! also, the fruit and the root can be eaten or applied to the skin to act as an anti-inflammatory.

a last fun fact about pineapple: a pineapple will never become any riper that when it is picked! unlike other fruits, a pineapple does not ripen once removed from its plant. instead of “ripening,” the pineapple gets soft once an enzyme inside of it gets activated. this enzyme works to break down the structural material inside the plant. cool, huh?

cool… just like the smoothie that my yummy pineapple will end up in sometime in the future!

.:.

low budget, homemade save-the-dates for our (ochre) wedding

March 10, 2014 / Emma / 4 Comments

last week we designed and completed our save the dates for our wedding. we really wanted the design to be simple and we decided that making/printing them ourselves would be cheaper and more fun!

i bought a multi-colored pack of card stock, which included 50 sheets of each color: yellow, cream, green, blue, and gray, and i also bought small, cream-colored envelopes designed to fit 1/4 of a regular sheet of paper.

i designed the save-the-dates so that 4 of them would fit on each page, landscape style. this allowed them to fit perfectly in the envelopes and also meant that we only had to print 15 pages (since we only needed about 60 or so save-the-dates). we chose the blue card stock for our save-the-dates and will likely use the other 4 colors in some form when we design the official invitations in the next few months.

the overall design for the save-the-dates is not very complicated. the card is one-sided and on the left we chose a simple clip art image of a black and white farm (house, field, and silo). on the right half of the page we included the special event, our names, and the general location (our city).

even though the design and printing did not take very long, there were other details that did take some time: when i bought the card stock and envelopes i also bought a do-it-yourself stamp kit and decided that the old-fashioned look of the stamp would be a nice addition to the cards!

it took forever to properly place the letters in the stamp for each of the 3 designs i wanted to use, but in the end i loved how the cards and envelopes looked!

the back of our save-the-date cards, stamped and ready to be mailed!

i used the stamp for:

our return address on the front of the envelope
the words kuska wiñasun homestead on the back of the save-the-dates cards
a design i put over the flap of the envelop once it was sealed, that included our initials (with a little house symbol in between) and our wedding date (see the picture above)!

i also added a little bit of color to the black-and-white image of the farm, using a silver sharpie for some shine!

and that was it, really!

i’ve also made a spreadsheet which includes all households and has columns for the number of people invited for each household, if their save-the-date has been mailed, if their official invitation has been mailed, how many people are confirmed as coming, etc. although i won’t be looking at most of the columns in this spreadsheet until months from now, making it was very helpful in making sure that i didn’t skip anyone or address two envelopes to the same household! it makes me feel very on top of the whole thing–which is key for weddings, as i understand it!

almost 6 months until the wedding, now! wow!

.:.

farm food friday: savory venison stew recipe

March 7, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

we have another snow day on our hands and what better way to spend the day than slurping up a delicious and nutritious venison stew?! this recipe is jason’s newest specialty, who fearlessly makes soups without written recipes, and due to his copious adding of spices, they always turn out to be excellent!

jason has made this stew twice so far, and included different vegetables in the pot based on what we had in the house at the time. i’ve asked him what exactly he added to these soups, and his response has been: “you know what i do, you know, earthy spices.”

in order to make this stew more manageable for those of you at home, i’ve put his description of just how he does it into my own words:

in an ideal situation, which means having all of the ingredients around that we want to use, this is what goes in our savory venison stew…

the ingredients:

venison butt/rump roast (or any roast of beef that you would like to use, preferably with the bone or with any stew meat)
one large onion
4 large carrots
3 large shafts of celery
5 or 6 medium-sized potatoes
salt & pepper
5-10 garlic cloves and/or garlic powder, oregano, basil, paprika, 1-2 bay leaves
red wine
olive oil
beef broth, chicken broth, venison bone broth (if you’ve made some in advance), or just plain water if you don’t have any broths in the house.

keep in mind that if you are missing any of these ingredients, you need not abandon ship yet! any other earthy spices that you have (such as rosemary, etc.) can be added/substituted and other vegetables can be included. for example, the second time jason made the stew, we did not have potatoes or onions. he instead added more celery and included our own sweet potatoes, which turned out to make a different and interesting soup!

some things to have prepared first:

have your crock pot out and ready to go! if you do not have a crock pot, i recommend getting one, as it can be left on all day while you are at work without any risks associated. but, if you do not have one currently, you can certainly use a large pot and cook the recipe on your electric/gas stove on low/medium.
set your meat out of the fridge for about an hour so it has time to warm up.

savory venison stew, 4 hours into cooking. yum!

and the directions:

cut onions, carrots, celery, and potatoes into medium-sized pieces.
rub a seasoning of salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, oregano, basil, and olive oil over the meat. pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees.
place cut vegetables (as well as whole garlic cloves, if you are using some) into a deep, large, casserole dish.
douse the vegetables with olive oil and generous amounts of all of the above-mentioned spices. add 1/4 cup of red wine over the spread.
place the meat on top of the vegetables and put in the oven for 10 minutes or until the meat is braised and brown and the vegetables have a roasted look.
once dish is removed from oven, transfer the meat and veggies to the crock pot and add 1/4 cup of red wine to the casserole dish and stir while scraping the bottom. this ensures that you get all of the little, roasted pieces of food and spices! add this mixture to the crock pot.
add 1 or 2 bay leaves. decide now if you want more spices added, based on your personal tastes and add them!
fill up your pot/crock pot with your choice of broth!
cook the stew in your crock pot on low for about 8 hours (longer wouldn’t hurt) or on your stove on medium or low until the meat can be easily shredded but before your vegetables are reduced to a pulp!
serve and enjoy!

.:.

creating new space for great things: cutting down a big oak tree

March 5, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

as jason mentioned in his post yesterday, this weekend we enlisted my father’s help to clear a dying oak tree in our yard. i’m hoping that we’ll decide to use most of the new-found space for garden beds and a small orchard! we both really love the idea of cutting the stumps (there were 4 large “fingers” that made up this tree) to make them into seats, a table, and perhaps even a foot rest! we’re also thinking about somehow incorporating the space into our wedding… perhaps where the ceremony itself takes place… but we’re not sure yet.

starting to work in this area around the tree, we weren’t totally sure what the final product would be. we had originally thought to start cleaning up around the barn by clearing and pruning, thereby opening up that spot for wedding antics–but jason and i couldn’t agree on how to approach it.

sometimes we have similar visions of what we’d like to do with our land/yard and other times we can’t agree at all–this was one of those times. that’s just the nature of love and partnership! we did both agree, however, that we wanted to clear the barn area but we couldn’t come to a consensus about what to do with the cut trees and the empty space we would end up with afterwards…

and so we dropped that idea and dove head first into working on the area around the oak!

before: the many trunks of the oak tree (back and center, covered in snow)

there were a lot of pines and scrubby trees to cut and tons of green briar to rip out. as jason mentioned, poison oak abounds in that area, and although we killed a lot of it, we’ll certainly have to weed eat (or pig eat) in the near future.

we also found broken glass, tires, decaying lumber, metal (grates, tool boxes, cans, screws), plastic, and even a truck’s large tool rack. most items were trash but some were treasure!

after clearing all of the junk and the smaller growths under the large oak “fingers,” the chainsawing began. jason and i do not own our own chainsaw yet, and it is a big help to have a trusted family member willing to help! my dad has also helped out by cutting oak logs for this year’s mushroom crop. even though chainsaws are super useful, they still make me somewhat nervous (even though i’ve been around them my whole life) so i’m glad to have my dad help. he cut all four trunks of the tree about 4 feet off the ground, notching each of the trunks first so they would fall the way we wanted… except one of them. as soon as this one trunk (that he didn’t notch) started to go down, we could tell that the not-notching approach was not the best idea. the tree did fall the way we had hoped, but it bent upon itself and stayed partly attached to the stump. just looking at the result made me nervous!

the aftermath of felling the oak trunk without the pre-cut notch. note the size of the tree and how much pressure is sure to be on the bent pieces.

jason and i stayed far away while my dad slowly tried out a couple options for bringing the tree the rest of the way down. first he cut off some larger limbs that appeared to be holding up the trunk. that made the tree shift but did not bring it down. then he tried to cut at the taught pieces of wood that were still attached at the location of the cut (keep in mind that all of the weight of the tree was bowing down these pieces, and it was a surprise that they had not already snapped when the tree fell). needless to say, during this time i yelled at my dad not to make the cuts into the taught, flexed, “wooden slingshots,” but he only grinned at me and went for it anyway. uggghhh… fathers! they can be such punks!

despite my anxiety, his cuts to this part of the tree did not result in injury, and he stopped cutting in that area once the tree shifted a little bit more. then he cut the rest of the limbs off that might have been holding the trunk in the air and we discovered that the tree was actually balancing on a single pine pole coming out of the ground. annoyingly, my dad decided that kicking the pine pole would knock the heavy trunk off and make the tree finally hit the ground. he did this, and in my mind, barely got his leg out of the way before the heavy trunk hit the dirt.

i was horrified by what i perceived to be an exercise in idiotic risk-taking, but he simply laughed at me and said “i knew what the tree was going to do… and my leg was out from under it well before it hit the ground. it didn’t even come near me!” yeah, right!

anyway, we all escaped without injury (which is not surprising for jason and i since we were well away from the action the entire time).

this video shows my father notching one of the trunks and then sawing through it… a much safer tree-cutting practice than the other!

once the portions of the tree were laying on the ground, my dad cut them into manageable rounds and jason and i stacked them “tipi style” so that they would dry better… and now we have two great mounds of firewood that we will need to process, split, and store in the near future.

after: jason and bolt posing with the oak stumps n the background. what a changed view of our land!

so, not only did we clear the area of a dying tree and make way for future gardening and livestock practices, we also gained a lot of wood for next winter’s woodstove heating adventure! and although i hate to admit it, sometimes it is ridiculously fun to watch my dad act like a stupid teenager!

.:.

hawks and moles and mice, oh my!

March 3, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

we’ve had some amazing animal adventures over the past few days. this is to be expected at the beginning of spring (or at least what appeared to be spring until it dropped from 50 degrees to 20 degrees over the course of 5 hours today and then started to snow and sleet!). this means the school system where i work is closed tomorrow… and i get to spend my birthday at home! fantastic!

the other day bolt unearthed a mole while digging in the yard (now we know what he’s been digging for!) and played with it a little bit but wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with it since it wasn’t fighting back or running–just laying there and squeaking. bolt’s problem was solved when he encountered an escaped chicken (6 of them sneaked out of the small crack in the gate during feeding time a few minutes before bolt found the mole). the chicken ran from jason and i and flew towards bolt, who forgot all about the mole and tried to pluck the bird out of thin air. luckily, the chicken never got close enough, seeing the big black monster that bolt has become, and turned back toward us. when bolt returned to the mole it was gone, having waited for the opportune time to make his escape!

after this adventure we also noticed that dodger had caught a few prizes: field mice. we saw him catch 2 from afar, and later jason confirmed that dodger had eaten the head off of at least one of them. a little bit of a waste, dodger… we wish you would eat the whole thing!

also… about a week ago, jason saw a small, white-speckled, brown hawk fly in twice to smack up against the bird net above our chicken yard. after seeing this he sent me a text message that said: bird net: 2, hawk: 0.

unfortunately, this same hawk got smart and found a small hole in our bird netting a few days ago. the holes were torn in the netting a few weeks ago when we got 8 inches of snow. the wet, thick snow on the netting weighed it down too much and ripped out some of the zip ties that we had used to attach strips of netting together. we had noticed the holes but didn’t think too much of it, considering that up to that point we hadn’t detected any animal attacks at all.

anyway, this crafty hawk (which we are pretty sure is a cooper’s hawk) spent a few days looking at the netting and plotting his entry (or so we can assume). the first signs we found of his success came on friday.

i usually open up the chicken house and let them out into their yard every morning around 6am. jason found a dead bantam in the corner of the chicken yard around 7:30am. she was ripped open with many of her feathers missing and half of her breast was eaten. it was clearly a hawk attack.

a cooper’s hawk, photo courtesy Tobeyotter

the circumstances are still a bit of a mystery considering that the hawk was sitting outside the bird netting when jason came outside and flew away. did he kill and eat the bantam the night before and come back for more the next day? did he hear jason coming outside and somehow escape the netting in time (but stay around to actually see jason appear?). also, why was he able to catch bantams but not our standard hens who are much slower? after thinking on it, we’ve realized that the hawk probably didn’t even try to get the larger hens, since a cooper’s hawk is about the size of a crow. but, we just aren’t sure!

so, long story short: we lost a bantam from the hawk attack. then… late in the day on saturday once jason and i went inside after being outside all day, the hawk came back and went for another bantam! he got inside the netting again and pulled the feathers from another bird but did not wound her. jason and i chased him away and we have since patched all the holes in the net. once we move our chicken yard later this week, we’ll re-patch it again just to be sure.

overall… very frustrating. but also, admittedly, very exciting. and we suppose that this is the way it is: we’re learning firsthand that raising animals and plants comes with some failures and some successes. some living and some dying. you witness birth; you witness death, and the cycle goes on…

.:.

wedding on the homestead: doing it our (ochre) way

February 26, 2014 / Emma / 9 Comments

we are getting married!

well, not yet. not until september 27!

and yet, of course, it is time to start brainstorming and setting some wedding plans in motion. plans, plans, plans!

first of all, i would like to say as the future bride/legal life partner that this is an exciting time! we might not be celebrating our wedding in the classic way, but we are celebrating it with style (our own!) and love!

it’s us: jason and emma!

as jason and i discussed what we wanted the ceremony/big-fun-time-party to be like, we quickly realized that we wanted to give as much or more as we were getting. now considering that we aren’t wealthy folks, we can’t give expensive things or pay for the hotel rooms of our loved ones. but, we can give of ourselves in as comprehensive a way as possible! we realized that we want our loved ones to know that we are grateful that they have chosen to share our big event and our lives with us, and we can do that by sharing with them our way of life, with many of our philosophies embedded within.

here are a few things that we are doing our ochre way style:

wedding location: it will be here, on our homestead. we will be celebrating in our backyard and we’ll have the barn, paths through the woods, and the pond for people to explore!
family roles throughout the ceremony: we plan to include family members in the ceremony, either as speakers or as “officiants” of some sort–we’re not exactly sure in what manner but we know it will include our moms and dads in more meaningful ways than in a traditional wedding.
decorations: the wedding is going to be informal but with certain style elements! i’ve got a wide color scheme–basically all fall leaf colors (any shade of red, yellow-orange, green, and brown) and we plan on asking all family and friends to wear some fall colors so that we can be a sea of fall leaves together. everyone is really part of this wedding and i want everyone to be constantly aware of our shared identities and family community! my entourage (a joke–since i am not calling them my “bridesmaids”) will each wear one of the fall colors (in whatever shade or style they decide!). decorations will be things like wooden vases, wild flowers, etc.

us visiting arches national park (we’re the two goofy looking ones in the front!)

an extended timeline: most of jason’s family live outside the state and we definitely want to enjoy them as much as we can while they are visiting. partially for this reason, and partially because i have always found weddings to be way to whirlwindishly short when they start in the evening, we’ve chosen to begin our wedding celebrations in the early afternoon. this way, jason and i will have hours of time to spend time with loved ones, building our excitement together as one big extended family, and doing what all families do best: eating, drinking, and dancing.
the food: we decided that outsourcing the food production and the meal wasn’t going to work for us. so, we’ve decided to prepare most of the meal ourselves with some help from close family members. we’ve included favorite family recipes, delicious homegrown crops, and even a version of an earth oven for baking meat and vegetables that i learned how to make and use in peru, where jason and i met.
the music: it will be dance, dance, dance music! dancing is one of my favorite things on the planet and i’m sure almost all of our family and friends will shake some booty with us. and i’m really excited about the songs we’ll be playing and how we will build our playlist… my next step in wedding planning is to email everybody (and their momma) and ask them to send me a list of some of their favorite songs. i can’t wait to see everyone jump up for their chosen songs during the night!
party favors: i can’t say what they will be (i don’t want to give the secret away just yet), but i can say that they will be homegrown and homemade items!

i intended for this to be a short list of our plans for our lifelong partnership ceremony/wedding, but as you can see, i got carried away! i will leave you with this and move on to printing our save-the-date cards we just finished designing last night (another thing we wanted to make/do ourselves!). 7 months to go…

.:.

cutting mushroom logs: the magic begins!

February 25, 2014 / Emma / Comments Off

i’m excited to report that we’ve officially begun our magical, mushroom adventure! this weekend my father and i cut 50 oak logs to serve as mushroom homes for the next 5 years!

we cut both white and red oak logs, to compare them as growing mediums and for the visual variety. the mushrooms that we are growing this year love oaks the best! we made both 3-foot and 4-foot logs, based on diameter of the limb/trunks (i have to be able to lift each of them for soaking in the future!). as luck would have it, 24 of the logs ended up as 3-footers and 26 as 4-footers. talk about balance!

a red oak (leaning in the foreground) that we cut, only using the bottom portion that was alive at time

my dad cutting an oak!

when selecting trees, we picked ones closer to the road and ones that we could use most, if not all of, once felled. one of the trees we picked was broken off and hanging about 15 feet above the ground, so we cleared the area of the danger of the hanging wood while also getting our logs. we did not use the hanging portion of the tree, though, because that part had been dead for some time. we left that behind for future firewood and selected the green portions of the tree. choosing green wood is important because you don’t want to give bugs or molds and other fungi time to move into the dead wood before you inoculate. bugs might eat your spores and other fungi might compete with your own mushrooms!

my dad felled the tress with his chainsaw. ever since i was a kid he has impressed upon me the importance of chainsaw safety. the approach to felling these trees was no different than other times i have done tree work with him: i stood well away and was “ready to run” even though the trees were certainly on the small side!

after each tree hit the ground, i walked a wide circle around him (never walk up behind a chainsawing person!) and pulled the measuring tape to 3- or 4-foot lengths, depending. dad made a shallow cut at each measured length and once the entire tree was sectioned he cut the logs into individual pieces. some of the white oaks we chose were dead at the top (one of the reasons for choosing them), and this dead wood was also left behind for firewood or perhaps adding to hugelkulture beds soon.

after finishing each tree, we carried the logs to the road, taking careful not to scratch the bark too badly (the bark is important here, folks!)

in all, we cut 6 trees, half in the red oak family and half in the white oak family. our mushroom logs’ diameters range from 3-inches to 8-inches. once all the trees were done we loaded our trucks and drove them to the house.

mushroom logs loaded in our truck

when we unloaded we were once again careful with each log, and i pruned the logs of any small limb nubs with a hand saw and held the logs still while dad chainsawed larger knots off. the purpose of this is to make sure that we can drill holes uniformly over the log before inoculation, as knots can be tough on drill bits.

our drying oak logs (with emma)!

now that we’re done “cleaning up” the wood, the logs have been stacked against the back of the house to dry for about 3 weeks until the wood’s natural anti-fungal defenses have mostly broken down (this decay generally gets into full swing about 2 weeks after cutting).

and there the logs will sit until we inoculate them in 3 weeks. now it’s time for stage 2: ordering our spores and other related gear (wax, drill bits, etc)!

.:.

KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013