from poult to platter

These are Julia's 4-H turkeys, taken sometime in August when they were just a few weeks old. Three are hers; the rest belong to other 4H-ers.









Here they are about three months old, early November.













On Monday, November 23, we loaded the turkeys up and took them to the butcher. (Well, some of the 4H-ers took them. We didn't want to watch the butchering.)









We picked the turkeys up and delivered Julia's sponsors' turkeys Tuesday evening. We brined ours Wednesday and cooked it in the rotisserie. OMG! It was the absolute best turkey I've ever eaten!


Happy Thanksgiving!

remember my compost pile pumpkin?

Stupid deer.

end of season

Went back out to the farmhouse yesterday to get the last 107 bulbs planted. I know, what an odd number... I had 100 of my little shade bulbs left, and the guys just could not get those last 7 daffodils bulbs planted last week. "We were just so tired!" I learned that they are both very different from me: I don't care how tired I might be or how dark it is...I would never stop with only 7 out of 200 bulbs left!

Total bulbs planted this fall: 454. We've barely left summer and I cannot wait until spring!

We also decided to pick everything that was left in the garden, since we'll probably get a killing frost before our next trip out. We cut off all the fall lettuce plants, picked all the green peppers, dug up all the carrots, and snipped a bunch of herbs -- parsley, cilantro, and dill (left some of the herbs in case they can go to seed for us). Oh, also pulled the scallion. Yes, I said scallion. We got one. And it's thinner than a pencil. sigh. The only things left are a few turnips.

We were pleasantly surprised to find 3 watermelons hiding in the tall grass! Haven't tasted them yet, but I'm hopeful.

More things to remember for next year:

• If I decide to plant cucumbers again (which I do plan on), I will start my dill very early. It's kind of a drag that the dill came in after the cucumber plants had finished.
• I need to plant way more cilantro.
• I'd like to plant more carrots, too. Wish it weren't so much work to prepare the soil for carrots. Maybe we'll try raised beds next year.
  
• Lettuce is a very easy fall crop.
• Watermelons need to be started much, much earlier. And probably fed a lot, too.
• Sweet potatoes need to be covered with chicken wire. It seems that bunnies like sweet potato leaves almost as much as bean plants. (Didn't get any sweet potatoes this year.) I've never grown sweet potatoes before...I guess technically I still haven't.
  

bulbs

Yesterday, we planted bulbs ... lots and lots of bulbs.

We have an area of the yard at the farmhouse that doesn't grow much grass, so we decided to try naturalizing daffodils there. We found a nice assortment of daffodil bulbs for naturalizing from White Flower Farm in Connecticut and bought 200 bulbs. While we were at it, we bought 200 of another assortment of small, shade-loving bulbs for our shady garden (which has grown pretty much nothing but weeds since 2005). And we threw in some popeye daffodils and red and yellow tulips to plant by the front stairs -- 448 bulbs altogether! Got all but 100 of the small bulbs planted...hope to get to them next weekend.

Using the new bulb planters Dana picked out ... very expensive, but worth it if you're planting hundreds of large bulbs. (I used a trowel to plant the small bulbs.) Petra kept picking up the bulbs and running away with them. I think she thought they were tennis balls.

We also discovered that frost comes a lot earlier to Berks County than it does to Delaware County. In Broomall, I still have beans and peppers and herbs coming in, and we don't really expect frost until November. But at the farmhouse, it got cold enough to kill the basil and bush beans. So we picked all the rest of the mature peppers, pole beans, and squash, just in case it freezes harder before we get back. We also found a watermelon in the long grass.

Another fun thing I found was a salamander by the front of the house (where I was planting the tulips). I think it's a red-backed salamander. Very cute.

shorter days

The days are getting shorter. The chickens must know this, too, because the new laying hens have stopped laying. I figured that would happen when the days got really short, but not this early in the season. Yesterday was the third day in a row that we got eggs only from our heritage chickens -- and even then, only one each day!

Yesterday, I tried something new -- I let the chickens out of their run. I did this late in the day, just in case they decided to wander (figuring they'd want to go home when it got dark). But they didn't really wander much at all. They stayed near the coop, and near me. They enjoyed finding worms (guess they pretty much cleaned all the worms and bugs out of the run by now), and some of them got the chance to stretch their wings and fly. Caleb and Christina had fun (I think) helping me herd them back into the coop when we heard something moving on the hill behind the coop.

Check out our compost pile pumpkin. (The compost pile is up the hill; pumpkin vines creeped down the hill all summer, on top of the azaleas, leaving only one pumpkin hidden underneath.) I think this is our best pumpkin of the year, and we didn't even plant it, let alone purchase seeds for it. I'm never buying pumpkin seeds again.

more chickens

We picked up the girls' laying hens from the 4H barn Friday night -- put them in the coop after all the hens were asleep, hoping to minimize pecking. When we checked on them Saturday morning, the new birds all had slightly bloody combs. Guess the pecking order is being worked out.

Sunday we discovered that the new laying hens are not really afraid of Petra. She barks and barks at them, and they just stand there looking at her, cocking their heads in that chickeny way. She gets so angry and frustrated that they won't react, and even angrier when they peck her nose.

Barlow (the blue cochin) and Superchick (the mottled java) spend a lot of time "herding" the layers into the cubbies. At one point yesterday, all three of them were packed into one tiny foot-square compartment with Barlow standing guard in front of them. So today, I shut the heritage chickens outside in the run just so the new girls could get to the food and water.

fall harvest

Boy...between school starting and all those veggies coming in, September just flew by.

We got Caleb off to college in Massachusetts, and the rest of us started school here. My goal this year is not to get too bogged down correcting homework to have a life. So far, I think I'm doing well in that regard.

This past month, we have been smoking pork from a pig we bought at the 4H auction. (I think there is a learning curve there...how do you smoke everything thoroughly without it getting all dried out?) We have been trying to clear space at the farm to plant blackberry bushes later this fall or next spring. And, of course, we have been trying to keep up with the harvest of veggies at the farm and in Broomall.

Although the cukes and tomatoes are pretty much done (stupid tomato blight), there's always basil (for pesto!) coming in. Also a few pumpkins, carrots, summer squash...but the best harvests this year have been beans and peppers. I have picked upwards of 13 pounds of green, wax, and purple beans and frozen about half of them. Gave away a bunch, and ate most of the rest raw. Most of us prefer them raw.

Things I have discovered about growing beans:

• bunnies love bean sprouts, so bean plants must be covered with netting or chicken wire.
• it is much easier to see wax and purple beans than green ones on the plants, but green ones taste marginally better.
• pole beans are much cleaner than bush beans when you pick them -- no dirt or slug damage.
• purple beans turn green when you blanch them (actually, I learned this one 20 years ago!)
• blemishes on purple beans are hard to see until after they're blanched.

Things I have discovered about growing peppers:

• purple peppers aren't worth it. the color is interesting, but it's just on the surface, not through-and-through. plus, they tend to be thin walled and bitter.
  
• cherry peppers ripen quickly, so you can start harvesting early on.
• one cherry pepper plant and one jalapeno pepper plant are generally enough hot peppers for a normal family. hot peppers are pretty prolific. plus, pests tend to leave them alone.
  
• pepper plants need to be caged just like tomatoes -- they get pretty tall and the branches get heavy (I learned this one 20 years ago, too!)

Kind of wish I had weighed the peppers as I picked them, too. We got some real beauties. One of my goals for the garden each year is to get enough good peppers to have pepper steak and stuffed peppers at least once during growing season. We did! I actually took pictures...

So a friend of mine has a blog -- www.girlymama.com, a really amazing blog -- I don't know how she does it. She actually gets sponsors and has giveaways. Wow. This month, she's giving away a Paula Deen cookbook (signed!) if you submit a recipe for comfort food. Well, stuffed peppers certainly is a comfort food (to me anyway), so I think I'll just put the recipe in this space and see what comes of it. Who knows? I may not win the cookbook, but someone may actually read this blog someday and decide to make my mom's stuffed peppers...

Mom's Stuffed Peppers

4 large peppers, various colors
1 cup Minute Rice
1 pound lean ground beef
2 T oil
2 eggs
2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1 onion, minced
1 16-oz. can tomato sauce

Cut tops off peppers to make a large opening. Remove seeds from peppers and lids. Arrange in a deep pot just large enough to hold them upright. Mix together rice, meat, oil, eggs, salt, pepper, onion, and 1/4 - 1/3 c. tomato sauce. Spoon into peppers loosely. Replace lids and use a toothpick or two to hold the lids in place. Cover (almost) with water and remaining tomato sauce. Cover; bring to boil and then simmer on low for 2 hours. Serves 4.

Can also be assembled in the morning and cooked in a crock pot.

chickens

We have a small chicken coop at our suburban home in Broomall. It currently houses 3 heritage chickens, but we plan to add a couple more soon.

Our daughters have been doing poultry club at the Delaware County 4-H, and this year, we decided to bring their chickens home after the projects were over. The heritage chicken project ended a few weeks ago, so we brought home Julia's chicken (a mottled Java) and two others (a buff orpington and a blue cochin). When the laying hen project ends in October, we will bring home the girls' two laying hens (red sex-linked, whatever that means).

(I think it is very cool that Julia named her chicken Superchick. The other two are named Barlow and Eisley. Get it?)

Anyway, on Sunday, Dana found the first egg. Small, speckled, and brown. It's about time!

the first one

We bought a farmhouse in Berks County, PA, in December 2005. We have about 32 acres -- most of the farm's land was sold to developers, so we are surrounded by suburbia. The house itself is a beautiful, old stone house with 3 fireplaces, two of which work. Someday, we plan to retire there, but for now, it's just a weekend, summer, and holiday getaway. (Albeit a working getaway.)

I wish I had started this blog back in 2005. It would be nice to have had a real-time journal about everything we've been doing. Instead, I'll just fill in the blanks as the need arises (and time permits).

The nutshell version looks like this: we've been planting fruit trees and vegetable and flower gardens, battling deer and bunnies, and laying plans for our future "hobby farm." All this while "living" an hour away, raising 3 teenagers (and one almost-teen), and homeschooling.