Thankfulness

I have been behind for weeks.  Butchering season was late this year, and since it usually signals the Fall season for me....I'm just now catching up to November.

2012 has been one of the most difficult, yet most blessed years I can recall.  Now that it is coming to a close, I thought I'd mention a few things around here that I am thankful for.  These things are actually tools that make my life a bit easier, and anything that lightens the workload is always appreciated! 

First off, is good dawgs.  They are hard to come by.  These 2 would give their lives to protect our goats, and that makes them priceless to me...

Next would have to be my truck, Black Beauty.  It took years to find just the right one for me...and you have no idea how special she is!  With a small trailer I can haul 30 bales of hay at a time; much easier.

 On Christmas my mother in law and I were talking about knife sets and kitchen gadgets.  When my father in law came back from Germany years ago, he brought her a knife set.  In that knife set was a pair of bone shears.  German steel, antler handled bone shears.  These things are a work of art....beautiful craftsmanship....and she gave them to me.  I was speechless.

The last thing on my list for this evening, is something we recently installed....

It is a frost-free hydrant.  Actually, we've got 3 installed so far.  We found these at an auction a while back, but didn't get them in until recently.  The handle on the back lifts up and allows water from the well to flow.  Once the handle is lowered, the water in the hose and stem pipe drains from the stem...leaving nothing in the line to freeze.

No more carrying buckets of hot water from the house because the hoses are frozen.

No more cracked and leaky hoses stretched across the yard.

No more dragging the hose out to the pig pen in the heat of the summer because the pigs knocked over their trough again.

Oh yes, these make my life MUCH easier!

It is the little things in life that we must never take for granted.  It is the little things that make up the big picture.

Christmas 2012

I can sum up my excuse for tardy posts with one picture...

Honestly, I don't know how I ever got things done on the homestead when I had 4 kids running around!  Of course I was a lot younger then.  Hmmm.  This 20 month old little blessing has kept me quite busy over the last couple of weeks, with little time to post!

When I haven't been busy chasing him, I was working on preparing our annual Christmas gift baskets.  This year we chose a breakfast theme.

Before I get started, I want to pause and show you a gift I recieved.  It's an 8 foot long stainless steel commercial kitchen work table....

A friend found it at a garage sale, and immediately thought of me!  It took some scrubbing and polishing, but now it is a sanitary, convenient workspace for me!!

I spent hours working at that table getting bacon sliced.  Our bacon was especially good this year...

Then I moved on to mix the breakfast sausage, and getting the rest of the things for the basket in order...

There just wasn't time to take pictures of each step, from grinding the flour to drying apricots and toasting nuts.  Except for the coffee and little creamers all was home made/mixed/ground or grown.

This year the baskets included:

a dozen eggs

breakfast sausage

bacon

spiced apple pancake mix

beauty berry syrup

beef jerky

apricot coconut almond trail mix

toasted hazelnut coffee

raisin oat nut granola

They all turned out very nice, and it brings us joy to share the fruits of our labor with the ones that we love.

On Christmas day we all gathered at Bob's folks' house.  We are very blessed to still have his mom and dad with us, as well as his brother and 2 sisters and their families.  All of us live close enough that we are able to get together every year.

Of course there is always good food, good conversation, and lots of memories.

Here is Bob with his parents and siblings...

And here are the GrandQueens

Once the food was eaten, babies were tired, conversations were dwindling.....it was time once again to go our separate ways.  As we were getting ready to leave and saying our good-byes....we got this...

Yep!  Our first snow of the new winter!  Big chunky storybook flakes of Christmas snow!

On the one day of the year that I actually welcome that white stuff!

I hope each and every one of you had the Merriest of Christmases, and I pray for peace and blessings to each of your households in the coming year!

Merry Christmas from all of us at Queenacres!

Turkey Trotter Broth

Yes, you read that right.  No I haven't lost my mind.

In my quest to produce more nourishing foods, I have been introduced to the concept of using the feet of poultry in stock.  I've been butchering chickens, turkeys, and ducks....and wasting one of the most healthful part of the birds.  The feet have more glucosamine and chondroitin than any of their other bones.  As someone with chronic joint problems, this is huge.  Supposedly, drinking a cup of this a day will keep the aches and pains at bay.  After a lot of research, here is the method I've chosen to make the stock.  Since I had 6 turkeys to process, it seemed like a perfect time to give it a try.

First, you peel the feet.  Yes, you heard that right.  Just like you scald the birds to make feather removal easier, you can scald the feet to remove the thick outer skin on the feet.  This step helps me get past the thought....of where these feet have been...

I use pliers to pull off the nails, the outer layer pops right off.  What you end up with is squeaky clean turkey feet....

I know, it takes some time to get past the thought.

But as healthful as this broth is, and if it helps my old achey joints.....I'll eat the feet!

The next step is the soak.  This step helps extract the minerals from the bones.  Use a good quality organic apple cider vinegar, about a tablespoon for each 2 quarts of cold filtered water.  Place the feet in a slow cooker, and cover with water...add the vinegar and allow it to soak for an hour.

You can make the stock on the stovetop or in a slow cooker.  I chose the slow cooker just so that I didn't tie up my stovetop for 2 days.

Next I introduce the cast of characters.  The usual suspects for making stock, carrots, onions, celery, garlic, with a bit of dried red chili flakes...

Rough chop the veggies, add a handful of black peppercorns, some dried sage, sea salt (I don't usually salt to my stock, but since I will be drinking this rather than cooking with it....it got salt). 

By the way, the carrot tops and celery bottoms all go out to the greenhouse; I plant them in the aquaponics system and let them grow all over again...

Fennel will grow from the cut-off bulb also, but you have to put it in a dry end of the system since it's more prone to rot.  Again, no waste.

You have to stay busy while waiting for the stock.  This is no instant procedure....you are extracting the gelatin and minerals from bones.  After about 24 hours of cooking at a low boil, the stock looks like this...

Give it another 12 hours at a low boil, and it looks like this...

You want that rich brown color...but more importantly look at the color of the bones....the minerals have been pulled out and the bones will actually crumble when you mash on them.  Strain.....

The result is a very rich, gelatinous stock...with very little fat.  I started with a gallon of water added at the beginning of the process.  That's a 2 quart jar. 

Imagine the flavor of a good turkey pot pie...in liquid form.  Once you smell and taste this stock, you will get past the thought....

Kids and Kidding Update!

Once again, we've been crazy busy...with little time to spend on the computer.  We have finished kidding for December, with a much-needed easy birth.  Back in January we nearly lost Faith when she had a difficult delivery of triplets.  Yesterday she delivered a beautiful bouncing buckling ("Prince") with ease. 

This was her 9th kidding, she cleaned him up....nursing him great....and gave me 4 doses of colostrum to put into the freezer.  All this after milking all year.  I don't think you can ask for more than that!  It's no wonder she is my favorite goat!

Silly's twins are doing great, and they get prettier every day.  The buckling, who we've named Hamburger Helper ("Burger") was 8# 8oz at birth....

Now at 8 days old weighs 12# 7oz.  He is beautiful, and needs a home soon....

His sister, Queenacres Humble Heritage ("Rita") was 6# 6oz at birth....

And now is up to 9# 14oz.  She will be staying here...

And of course, the baby that kicked off this round of kidding...Queenacres Holiday Hope ("Holly") started at 4# 15oz.....

...and turned 2 weeks old yesterday.  She is a whopping 12# 3oz today...and one of the most striking kids we've ever had.  She will be staying also.

Kidding for 2012 is over.  We have been blessed.

Now we start our Christmas season!

Queenacres Choo-In Cilantro

Raising animals is not easy, and we are often faced with very difficult decisions. Tonight we had to decide between losing a doe and her kids, or losing a doe and try to save her babies.

She was the last of Exadore's kids, and the only Exadore/Legacy daughter. They will live on through Silly's twins.

RIP Silly girl, we will miss you....you've left a hole in our herd and our hearts.

Queenacres Choo-In Cilantro

6/1/08 - 12/5/12

Queenacres Holiday Hope

Our new kidding season has begun!  Fennel showed signs of early labor yesterday afternoon, so we moved her to the kidding stall for observation.  I stayed up with her until nearly 10pm and then left Levi in charge of checking in on her so that I could get some sleep.  It's a bit easier to check on them now that we have the barn cam....I'm loving that thing already!

About 1am I woke up and decided to check on her.  Watching from the mudroom tv is much easier than bundling up and walking out to the barn!  I could tell that she was having serious contractions and starting to push so I got dressed and went out to see how she was progressing.  First fresheners are unpredictable, they may push off and on for hours, or they may give a couple of good pushes and pop out triplets. 

It didn't take long for me to realize that she was having some trouble.  She was having strong contractions and pushing hard, but there was no bubble or any sign of the kid.  So I went in to see what was going on and discovered that the kid was presenting shoulder first, with it's head twisted against it's spine.  It was obvious at that point that the kid was dead; and we had to work fast if we were to save the other kid and the doe.  It took nearly an hour to get the dead kid out, a little doe that was marked just like her dad.  Then at 1:58am little Holly arrived, weighing 4# 15 ounces.

She is small (they were a few days early), but she is a good eater and everything about her looks great!

She looks a lot like her mother...and has nearly a full belly band...

But look at the marking on her forehead.....I see a Santa face....

Here is a picture of her dam..

And her sire...

Introducing Queenacres Holiday Hope

"Holly"

Fall Meat Harvest 2

Last week we stayed busy getting the turkeys done and ready for the big day.  I had a couple of friends come over in the morning, which made the work of butchering the turkeys go more quickly...

The turkeys went from this....

To this...

We only butchered about half of them, they averaged just over 9 pounds.  The remaining birds will be done for Christmas, and I'm hoping to have them up around 15 pounds by then.

About the time we were finishing up, a few family members stopped by for a visit...

The men folk gathered around Lil Blue....Bob's truck....to check for any signs of life...

Meanwhile the girls all played with the babies...

And Rylan demonstrated his fancy footwork....LOL