Our morning in pictures

Baked a coffee cake using the last of the frozen berries from the yard; a mix of blueberries, black raspberries and currants.

This is one of my favorites to bake. It's so simple and good.

My little man helped me find the berries in the freezer. He will play in there as long as I let him; holding up bag after bag and asking "What's this? Hm.. What's this?" This of course led to him finding my stash of ice cream bars which we ate. Oh and he also likes to say "sorry ducks" while holding a package of frozen quail which is hilarious. 

He learned to use the flour sifter and immediately showed Mickey how to use it. 

He has been doing this super cute thing this week: completely out of nowhere he has started calling me Mama Duck. As in "Mama Duck? Play Cat in the Hat?" or "Mama Duck! I stuck!" when he's hiding under a pillow. It's adorable. Of course I have started calling him Baby Duck which he loves. His morning chores consist of helping make the beds, feeding his fish and giving Bee treats. He was unloading the dishwasher but it's been broken this week which is pretty much my version of housewife hell.

Our amaryllis bloomed overnight.  I thought it was going to be pink but I did get it on clearance so who knows. It's beautiful. 

Yesterday we were playing in the yard and today the world looks lile this. I caught one of the female ducks and held her while little man petted her and named each part. He was beside himself 

 "Duck's ears! Duck's toes! Duck's nose!" I don't think the duck appreciated it as much as we did.

Elyse is doing an impression of a slipper this morning. Bee smells vaguely but undeniably like skunk. Don't know what to do about that except ignore it. I draw the line at bathing a cat.

Well that's it so far. Sincerely hoping baby duck takes a nap so mama duck can too. 

Canning jar trick

John over at Going Gently has a fun post this morning asking people to share real or made up household hints (check out Going Gently on the blog roll side bar - I love reading about John's adventures).

Anyhoo, I thought I'd share mine here too, with a picture.

If you use mason jars for canning or storage, the red lids from peanut butter jars fit them perfectly. So after you open your jar of jam you don't have to muck around with a sticky lid and band. It's only the red lids but seems to work for any brand I've saved them from.

I learned this from my grandpa who would not have called it a "life-changing canning hack!" He would have found that term totally asinine. He would have called it common sense. Of course I think he saved every single jar lid that ever entered that house, so sooner or later one was bound to fit.

Cooking goose with Hank Shaw

I've professed my crush for Hank Shaw on here a couple of times.  We own all of his books and I was a recipe tester for his new book Pheasant, Quail, Cottontail which comes out this spring.  He's one of those people who make our lives better on a regular basis not only from the recipes contained in the books but also by the vast store of knowledge and techniques that he shares with readers.  You can read my thoughts on his book Duck, Duck, Goose and my experience cooking Duck Bigarade by clicking here.

It's time to start eating the Embden gander we parted up and put in the freezer last fall so I pulled out one of the breasts and the wings and got out my copy of Duck, Duck Goose.  I wanted to try something completely new to me that wouldn't be too involved time-wise since I was cooking this on a Tuesday night.

I chose the Goose Breast with Orange-Ouzo Sauce.  I hadn't cooked with fennel for years and this used the bulb, which I'd never done and also called for anise liquor, orange and thai peppers.  Interesting.

Prep and go, people.

We are out of Thai peppers so I pulled a Jalapeno out of the freezer.  We also live in the sticks so for the anise liquor I purchased a cheap bottle of Sambuca. 

The breast is scored to release fat as it cooks - this is a good technique for duck as well.  It also called for duck/goose stock so first thing in the morning I tossed a pair of goose wings into the crock pot along with celery, carrot, onion and bay to make the stock.

He shares a brilliant technique for crisping the skin - the breast is cooked skin side down the entire time. I spooned the fat off and into a jar as it was released from the skin.  Goose/duck fat is heaven when added to anything.  He has a recipe in the book for a duck fat pie crust which I haven't tried yet.

Bee stood like this and made her sad face.  Didn't work.

Here it is, served with mashed potato:

Perfectly crisped skin, perfectly medium-rare.  Directions in the book followed to the letter.

Oh my goodness.  Remember when I said pickled eggs were the reason to keep quail?  I will kill a goose each fall for no other reason but to make this recipe.  It was pure heaven.  This is one of those dishes that you would happily pay $40 a plate in a fancy restaurant to celebrate a special occasion and then not shut up about it to anyone who would listen.  The sauce is absolutely amazing; sweet with the liquor and orange but hot with the pepper.  The meat was delicious.  My husband said it reminded him of well-aged venison and I thought it was a bit like quail. Like a wonderful, expensive indulgence.

The best part is that this happened in my kitchen, on a Tuesday evening, in under 45 minutes.

I think next up in the kitchen will be Cajun Dirty Rice with the duck, goose and quail giblets I've been hording.  And when the ducks start laying I'll try his Salt Cured Egg Yolks; apparently you shave them over pasta once they're dried.

If you hunt, fish, forage, keep waterfowl or just love to cook please visit his wonderful website Hunter Angler Gardener.  It's so beautiful and inspiring.

Vintage linens for sale

Some pictures so that someday I can look back and say "oh, WHY did I sell that?"  Also I think it's fun to see what other people are selling on Ebay, it gives me ideas of things to look for when I'm out second-hand shopping.  These are just a handful of the things currently listed.  Clicking on any of the captions will take you to the auction.

Vintage purple hankies

Vintage floral pillowcases

1950's Tiki Barkcloth

Vintage crib coverlet - 1940's?

Cross stitch pillowcase pair

Vintage sheeting fabric.

Blue floral hankies

A tiny handmade (by me) doll quilt

Vintage table cloth. I really, really, wish this fit our table.

There are also a ton of Nintendo games listed

There are over 50 things listed currently; mostly linens, feedsacks, fabrics and video games.  A handful of books.  If you're curious you can click here to see everything I have for sale.  Vintage fabrics and linens have been good to me over the years and are relatively easy to come by living in a rural area.  They're also easy to ship. If you do any selling  on Ebay or Etsy it's a good niche to look into.

Does anyone sell on Ebay or Etsy?  I know a couple people reading this do.  Please comment with a link!  I'd love to see what you're up to.

P.S.  The hatchery is sending me a sexed pair of geese as replacements.  I chose to get those two and a refund for the third.  I wonder how long I can keep all 5 before anyone notices? Just kidding, sort of.

Was sent the wrong birds. A choice to make.

So I've suspected for a couple of months now that the hatchery sent me the wrong kind of geese last spring. I had ordered a breed called Super Africans. Mine just didn't look like they were developing properly so this week I sent off some pictures to the hatchery. I was hoping that I still had the right birds but maybe they just weren't fully mature.

They got back to me yesterday confirming that they sent me the wrong geese. Shit.

Pinterest photo of Super Africans.

My geese. A production standard goose.

See the difference in the posture? And the dewlap (the loose skin under the chin)? Mine also are significantly smaller than they should be.  It's my understanding that in this country most geese sold as "Africans" are actually a mixed goose that have Chinese goose genes somewhere in their background.  It results in a lighter weight goose that lays more eggs.  It may not seem like a big deal but it means that I've spent the last year raising birds that don't meet the breed standard. At all.

They've offered to send me replacement geese or refund my money. The birds I paid for cost significantly more than the ones I recieved plus they're just not what I ordered. 

I have no idea what to do here. I like my geese. I don't have room for six geese. I don't want to butcher these three. I could try to sell the group.  They are friendly and sweet.  

Geese have a long lifespan. Truth be told, if I'm going to be looking at these birds for a long time I really would like the Super Africans. I keep going back and forth.  Going to give myself the weekend to think on it.

What to do? 

Snow geese

We are all SO over winter and it's only the middle of January.  Long, long sigh.

A lovely day

What's going on with the weather, honestly. Last week it was single digits and today it is 59 degrees... the kind of weather for planting peas and potatoes and lettuce. Oh well. We'll take what we can get, gladly.

Out for a walk. The snow has mostly melted off leaving the yard a soggy mess.

Bee and the little man are on the major deer trail that goes along the orchard.

Look what we found. I wonder if it's from the big buck that hangs around or if we have a new visitor.

This is the ugliest time of year for our property.  The grass is brown and muddy, nothing is growing and the snow has melted to reveal all of the crap I have littering our yard. Add the feral chickens running around and you can practically hear the banjos twanging.

I'm honestly feeling badly for our neighbors lately. Between the roosters, geese and the female ducks the only way this property could be louder is if we had a kennel full of dogs. Seriously, it's embrassing. Mostly they only go crazy when we're out in the yard.  Although late last night I could hear the geese (me inside the house with all the windows shut) going nuts about something, a skunk I think. I knew they would be loud but I didn't know they would be *that* loud.  Whoops.

After the little guy gets up from his nap we're going to head back outside. It's supposed to be back down to 15 by Saturday. Crazy weather.

The great freeze

It's been in the single digits all week here. Currently it is 3 degrees outside = damn cold. Everyone is pretty much hunkered down.

The whole world looks like this.

The quail have been burrowing in straw and I wrapped the pen in feedsacks to cut down on drafts.

Nigel looking amazing as always.  I am shocked that no one has frostbite.

I think my geese are mating? The ladies tails are starting to look ragged. Does that mean anything?

Elf village needs put away. There are 20 paperboard houses and about the same number of elves now.

The cats are charging their batteries.

Too cold to go outside so we brought the snow in.

Turning the rest of the holiday cheese into loaves of cheesy bread.

Trying to stay warm and happy while we wait the winter out. 

How was 2017? Goals for 2018

It was a great year.  No one got sick or died.

Seriously, I look through all of my pictures from the last twelve months and can't help but think how blessed we've been.  There have been so many good times with friends and family this year. It's been an amazing time.

I was looking back through my list of goals for 2017.  Mostly, they did not happen.  To the point where it's actually comical.  In the spirit of moving ahead, let's see what did and did not happen and where I would like to go in 2018.  There are going to be some drastic changes happening around here and my primary goal is just to cut myself some damn slack and go along for the ride.

Personal goals. This was the big section where I was supposed to take time for myself:

• Camping: We did this twice!  First a trial run to Pymatuning State Park with the camper and then a 4 day trip to Cook Forest State Park.  More camping this planned for this year, although I think we're going to be limited to May and early fall.

• Fishing & canoeing: I did go fishing a couple of times, including including that time when the trout won on opening day of the season.  No canoeing but I think we'll be able to do more of both of these next fall.

• Biking: YES! We did get one of those little pull behind carts.  It was tons of fun.

2017: The year I cooked a damn groundhog.  It was made into tacos and I was a recipe tester for Hank Shaw's new book Pheasant, Quail, Cottontail. Dream come true.

• Keep trying new things in the kitchen & keep baking: I think I did great with this, groundhog tastes somewhere between lamb and beef.  Carry on for 2018.
• Read a book each month: HA.  HAHAHAHAHAA..... nope. Not even close.
• Possibly 2017 might be the year I take the time to get a haircut: YEP
• Possibly 2017 might be the year I shoot a deer while hunting: NOPE.  We saw a group of deer but they were too far off.  The deer won in 2017.  They will not in 2018, however. Mark my words.  Deer: I will be looking for you.

Homesteading goals.  This homesteading thing is my hobby and I have a toddler helper.  How did the little guy and I do?

• Freezer meats: The goal was 25 chickens for 2017. Here's where I tallied up this year's body count. Total birds produced: 28 chickens, 46 quail, 1 goose, 1 duck.  Pretty happy about those numbers. I don't know what I'm going to get done in 2018 but we'll see.  
• Eggs:  We had tons to eat and share.  I hatched a big batch of peeps and sold them for feed money too.  Pickled quail eggs are amazing.
• Quail:  Got back into this in a big way with Coturnix quail.  Hatched a ton of eggs, butchered a lot of birds, sold a handful too.  Love quail.  I kept a small covey for breeding and want to start this project back up as soon as they are laying in the spring.
• Mushroom logs really need re-seeded: NOPE.  I am shelving this project for the foreseeable future.
• Growing herbs indoors: learned that I really hate houseplants.  This is getting shelved too.

The garden: hit it out of the ballpark.  We had piles of fresh produce and lots of beautiful flowers.  I put in a bed of alpine strawberries which are just heaven and produce fruit all summer.  

Discovered the joys of fava beans and broccoli raab.

The garden teepee was just fantastic.  There are plans for a much larger one in 2018.

Other goals.  

• Thinning out our stuff:  I did really well with this; a yard sale, trips to the thrift store and really worked Ebay in November and December.  Would like to work harder at this in the new year.  It brought in a little extra money and thinned down the stuff we didn't need: both wins!
• Kicking ass at the local fair this year.  Oh yes. Entered a baking contest for the first time.  You can see what I entered and won here.

Dreams.  Things that I didn't expect to happen but would really be thrilled about if they did.

• I really wanted geese on our property. It happened! I bought a trio of Super Africans for myself an an Embden for the freezer!

Here are my Africans along with my Pekin drake.  I love these birds so much.  Livestock love not house goose love.  Not that much.

• It would be really nice to find a foraging class or survival skills class to take instead of just reading about these things.  A (very) long-term goal of mine is to do a months-long pilgrimage hike like the Appalachian Trail when the little man is older. I want to start laying a path to prepare myself.  This is still a goal although the closest I got was finding a couple places near me and subscribing to their newsletters, and picking up another Appalachian Trail book.
• I wanted to be in a place to think of selling at the farmer's market in 2018.  Not even close.  My goal again for this year is to concentrate my efforts on feeding my family well.  Which is a good goal to have.
• It would be nice to have a copy of my blog bound as a book. Something to look into this year.

Comments? Suggestions? Here we go; cheers to a new year

The great clean up

This is the first day we've had in about a week with no Holiday plans.  It's been wonderful spending so much time with friends and family but the house is an absolute wreck. Every possible surface is covered in toys, pine needles, bits of wrapping paper or food crumbs.  It's making my skin crawl, honestly.  Time to get the broom out and sweep everything out the front door.

The little man was blessed with piles of new toys with each toy containing approximately 3,561 pieces.  Train sets, Legos, puzzles.  Mostly it is all laying on the living room floor.  Santa brought him a tot sized ride-on digger with a scoop arm and he's been moving the little piles around, which is cute and occupies him for hours.  But we need to figure out how to organize it all.

The refrigerator needs cleaned out.  Need to find something to do with the 5 lbs of cheese leftover from the holidays along with a huge bowl of citrus fruit.  A lot of the leftovers got fed to the chickens this morning including some breakfast casseroles from Christmas day. 

I want to remember that I made this baked French Toast casserole.  Served with maple syrup everyone loved it.  Basically a glorified bread pudding with a cinnamon crumb topping. I'm not sure it's necessary to use sourdough bread like the recipe recommends. Any store bought loaf with a good texture would probably do. The chickens only got crumbs of this one.  

Time to freshen up the house and ourselves and get ready for a new year.