Chickens

As you can imagine, my little chicks are growing so fast!!!!  It won't be long until they have to go outside with their parents.  I'm assuming however that we have beginners luck with this batch. 7 out of 8 hatched. They are all healthy, all eating, drinking, pooping. They are active and growing, and they all made it through the first 24 hours of their tiny little lives.

As I was outside scooping poop out of the grown up chicken coops, and laying down bedding in their house, I couldn't help but think how much my chicken "hobby" has grown. We started out with a 10x10 dog pen, with a shade cover, 2 coops, and 8 chickens. I was dead set against a rooster, and was going to winterize the pen quite simply. Now they have a 12 ft long house, with electricity attached to their run and a rooster. We are planning on adding another 10 ft to their run this month if everything works out right.  Plus we have an egg incubator, and a chick nursery. We plan on setting up a second house and run to raise easter egg chickens to sell. Not to make a profit as much as to put the money into the chickens themselves for food, and even better shelter. I'm not sure that its a hobby, because we eat the eggs as well, and some if the chickens are being raised for meat.

In other news, I'm trying to find a list of local craft shows to join up with for my crochet work. That will be fun, and educational!!!

Just picture

Saturday Post (no pics sorry)

Hey everybody!!! Sorry I'm a bit late getting my regularly scheduled Saturday post up, its been one of those days. Not in a bad way, but a busy day.

First off, let me tell you the bad news. I killed the celery for sure. So, I'm going to have to start that over, but not do what I did....which was over watering it, and then I added coffee grounds thinking that it would be a good idea, but I don't think it was, since the celery wilted and died after that.

Ok, now lets start with Thursday. The eggs that were due...or at least we thought they were, hatched!!! All 7 of the ones that we had confirmed as being alive, and well hatched!! And they truly are alive and well, and chirping. I know who the parents are of 6 of them, Those would be from the Red Star, and the Black star. We have a little striped one that's just absolutely adorable, I don't know who the parents are of that little fellow...well I do know who the father is, just not the mother.  They started the process before we got up Thursday morning, So I'm estimating sometime after 3:30 AM, because I was up once and for some reason looked in on them while I was up. Frank woke me up around 6:30 am to tell me that there was action in the incubator...well I jumped out of that bed in a hurry. I don't think I've ever moved that fast in my entire life.  5 of the eggs had little spots where the chicks had managed to peck little holes in them. Then about an hour later the last 2 eggs got the little holes in them. I believe the first Chick hatched around 11:30 AM. The last 2 eggs hatched before midnight, so it was a long exciting day.


Last night I went to the Midnight Mystery Quilting Bee at the Quilters Cabin in Woodstock.  That was a lot of fun, somebody even brought a cooler full of wine. that part actually cracked me up. I did partake and have a glass, but only one, and early in the evening because I knew that I had to drive, and I was operating a machine with sharp pointy objects on it.  But the lady that designed the mystery quilt, didn't realize just how much she had put into it, and we didn't get them done. But we do have the instructions to finish. I worked on it some this evening but didn't get it done. That's ok though, I'm going to work on it over the next couple of days to get it finished.

Well, I'm going to end this for now. I plan on posting many pictures later on. The network that my phone runs off of isn't acting right so its not allowing me to post pictures on here. Hopefully it will be, behaving itself tomorrow.  I may have to just take pictures with a regular digital camera and do it that way vs my phone.

Beginning of the week

Good Morning everybody!!! I'm sitting here with a cup of coffee and working on my list of things to get done today. Its not much really, I need to go to the post office to mail off a couple of crochet orders, and get to the store and buy some coffee. I'm not sure which ranks as more important coffee or packages. 

I'm pretty excited about the mystery quilt along that happens on the 30th of this month. Its at the local quilt shop, and its called the Midnight Mystery Quilt. The name of the Quilt is Oh Momma I lost the Stars. I was looking at my list of fabrics that I need, and I've decided to do the smaller quilt, mostly because I'm a slow cutter for one, and for two I want to have my quilt top put together along with everybody else, so I'm doing version 1, which will be 64 x 64 inches.  This thing has 4 different focus fabrics, and then it has a Light, a Dark, a Light-medium and a Dark Medium, and for the squares there are a whole lotta 2 and 1/2 by 2 and 1/2 inch squares!!! I really need to either go out and buy some fabric, or I need to go through all of my fabric upstairs, either way, its only 10 days away!!! (oh my)

Tomorrow we turn off the egg turner in the incubator and go into lock down. From what we can tell, we're down to 7 eggs with living chicks in them. We have really been keeping a close eye on things. As of right now though, those poor chicks look like they are really crowded in those shells now. I can tell you that on hatching day I'll be listening hard for those little peeps!!! It will be really exciting to be able to finally say that we raised Chickens from eggs, and even more exciting to be able to say that we gathered those same eggs from our chickens. Even though we didn't raise our chickens from eggs or babies, I think we're doing pretty good with them, and can say we've been fairly successful. With them being our first batch of chickens, and not having any casualties to wildlife, dogs, or whatever, I'm proud.

I think I've over watered my celery plant. The poor thing is really wilted looking, and soft. I'm going to try and let it dry out a bit and then see what happens. I don't want to loose it now, not after all the excitement of watching it as hard as I have been!!!  Now since we've had limited sunlight here lately, thanks to all the overcast skies and rain, I've been giving my carrot seedlings some extra light by leaving the light on in my craft room in the early morning hours. I know its not the same as sunlight, but until the sun decides to grace us with his presence it will help out some.

Well blogger friends and family, time to get to work!!!!  Laundry, Dishes, dusting, chicken coops, and a few other things!!!!

Saturday with a surprise

Well, it's Saturday, which means it's time for the weekly celery update..as well as something else!!!

The celery as you can see by the pictures is still growing quite well, in fact, there are new sprouts coming up. We like this here at my house!!!

Now for the something else!!! I came upstairs to grab some yarn, and to take a glance to see if my carrot seeds needed any water...well when I looked in there, my seeds have sprouted!!! I'm thinking in about a week I'll have to go through and thin them out, but I'm excited beyond belief!!!

On to the chickens!!! Everybody appears to be doing great!!! Unfortunately though, due to shorter daylight hours, I'm only getting 2 eggs a day. Once we get the lights in there though it should get better.
I've been keeping an eye in the eggs in the incubator!!! In just a few days, we will stop the egg turner, and go into egg lockdown. It won't be long until we hear the chirps of baby chicks!!!

Wednesday night post

I hope that everybody had a great day today. Things here were poetry fantastic.

I revamped my facebook page for my crochet things. I changed the name to hats by brandi. I'm kind of excited to see where this takes me.
I love the creativity of turning yarn into actual items.
you can check out my fb page here
http://www.facebook.com/HatsbyBrandi.com

Ok, yes...I may have been advertising just a little...but can you blame a girl???

So just so you all know, new recipe coming this weekend!!!

Monday musing

It would seem I have a habit of blogging about whatever it is I'm currently doing. I don't know if it's the way my mind works, or if I think you all just might find it slightly less than boring.

I'm still cutting out those quilt squares. I'm either going to have some really wild looking quilts, or something fantastic.

I've decided to start working on a special quilt for my oldest nephew. He's been engaged to this lovely young lady for quite sometime. They plan on waiting until they are both completely done with school before they say I do. Well, I've decided that I'm going to make them a non scrappy quilt. I'm going to make them a double wedding ring quilt. I'm going to do it using blues, and whites mostly. That will create some lovely scrap fabric as well. I almost can't wait to get started on that.

I have quilting group on FB that I started. It's slowly growing. We've decided to start doing a block of the month kind of deal, then we can make our very own sampler quilts....which reminds me, I need to work on finishing that one from the quilting class I took a couple of years ago.
Anyways, once I get things rolling, I'll post the links to the blocks so that you can follow along, or rather quilt along.

In other non sewing/crafting related news the celery continues to grow swiftly by the hour.

On a rainy Saturday

It's Saturday, and this is the third day of non stop rain...what's a girl to do??? Well, I've been working on cleaning and organizing my craft room, and part of that includes getting my scrap fabric organized and cut down to size.

My hubby wonderful man that he is got me these two most awesome books, scrap therapy cut the scraps, and scrap therapy scraps plus one. They are full of beautiful scrap quilt projects...so I've been slowly cutting my way through those scraps. I've not made much progress, but I'm getting there.

I've decided to try to dedicate an hour a day to cutting my fabric into submission. Then hopefully I will be able to get some quilt tops made. I do plan on putting the batting, and backing on, but I have a plan of action. I do have one scrap topper complete, folded up, and waiting to be completed.  So hopefully with time I'll have some quilt pics to show you.

Saturday Celery post

I've decided that every Saturday for a while, I'm going to post pics of the celery growth. It seems to have grown significantly in just a weeks time!!!

Truthfully I didn't imaging it would grow so fast. I kind of figured it would drag along.

Incubator update

As you all know, we are working on hatching out eggs for the first time. We are on day seven. I was doing some research, because I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for or at, and since most of our shells are darker it's kind of hard to see what's going on in there.

So in my research, I did discover that I needed it much darker in the house when I'm looking, and that you need to angle it a certain way. Once I got all of this right I was able to see that 8 of my eggs have chicks growing in them. The other two had nothing, just clear so we got rid of those.

So now 8 out of the 10 eggs are left, which is way better at this point than we were expecting.

Container Carrots

I had talked about wanting to grow carrots in a tub indoors about a week or so ago I believe...or I had talked to somebody about it.

Well, what could be better to do on a rainy day, than to plant some carrots in your craft room. I have two containers, and two packs of seeds...but only enough dirt for one container. That's ok though, I think I'll wait to see if these sprout before I get dirt for a second container.

Since my tubs I'm planting them in are tall enough, but not as long or as wide as I would have liked for them to be I only planted 3 rows, which means I only used about a half a pack. That's ok though, because that means I can stretch my carrot seeds out further. The first pack I used was the multi colored carrots.

I filled my tub up, and watered my dirt. I then mixed it up so that it wasn't so wet that the seeds would be packed tightly. Then I took and made three rows with a spoon, and sprinkled seeds in each row. Then I lightly covered the seeds with my damp dirt.

I now have my tub sitting on a chair in front of the window.

I'll post pictures as they sprout. If everything goes well, I'll have sprouts in about two weeks.

Crock Pot Apple Butter

This is such an easy, and delicious way to make fresh apple butter without the mess.  We love apple butter, and I love crock pot cooking so the two combined is magical!!

Now, you can, can this like you would jelly, or you can freeze it. I prefer canning it, as I like having my freezer.space for other things.

So, here we go

Put 3 quarts of apples peeled and sliced thin in a crock pot. Cook overnight on high. The next morning add 2 tsp cinnamon, 3 cups sugar and 1/2 tsp cloves. Cook all day on low.

That's it, that's all there is to it other than how your going to store it. When I'm canning it, I just leave the crock pot in until I get to the last little bit in the bottom.

Enjoy!!!

Celery part 3

In just about a weeks time, the celery grew enough to put it in a pot!!! I recycled the soil from the coffee bean kits that never grew.

Right now I have it sitting in my window seal in some good sunshine. So I'll just keep it nice and watered, and post pictures as it grows!!!

Canned Apple Pie Filling

4 & 1/2 cup sugar
1 cup cornstarch
2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
5&1/2 to 6 lbs tart apples
3 tbsp lemon juice

Mix first five ingredients, and stir in 10 cups of water. Cook until thick, and then add lemon juice. Pour over the apples that should be tightly packed in the jars.

Process in a water bath.
20 min for quarts
15 min for pints

As you can tell it's that time of the year!!! This is one of my favorite apple pie fillings. My favorite pay is knowing that I have home made pie filling in my pantry ready to pour into a nice fresh crust!!! Yummy!!!

Celery pt 2

OK, so I've been talking about re growing celery for a few days now. And as you can imagine I've been checking on it a few times a day. Well yesterday I noticed that it was indeed drying out, which it's supposed to. When I got up in the wee hours of the morning, I noticed that I had the tiniest bit of new growth sticking up this morning. I didn't take a pic stupid me...because when I looked again a little but ago, it was sticking out even further!!! This time however...I took a couple of pictures to share with you of the progresd!!!

My Spanish rice recipe

1 lb rice
32 oz. Container beef broth
2 cups of water
Salt to taste
1 yellow bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
1 red bell peppet
2 red onions
5 lbs hamburger
2 - 29 oz cans tomato sauce
2 -2.25 oz cans black olives chopped
4-14.5 oz cans basil, garlic and oregano flavored diced tomatoes
3 -14.5 oz cans of regular diced tomatoes
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Shredded sharp cheddar cheese
Step 1. In a really big stock pot, add your rice, beef broth, water, and salt to taste. Cook on low with the lid off. Stir occasionally to make sure rice does not such or clump.
Step 2.  While rice is cooking, dice up all of your bell peppers, and onions. Cook your veggies and beef together in a pan our pot big enough to handle all of that.
Drain well. Let sit in strainer for about 5-10 min.
By this time your rice should be done cooking. While the meat us draining add the two cans of tomato sauce to the rice and mix well. Make sure you have your burner in medium heat.
Step 3. Stir the meat mix in with the rice, and mix well, making sure that nothing is sticking to the bottom.
Step 4. Start adding the rest of your ingredients excluding the cheese one can at a time, stirring well between each addition.
Once you've dine this, leave the lid off and allow to simmer for 15 to 20 minutes,  stirring occasionally to make sure nothing sticks.
After it's done simmering, remove from heat and allow to sit for another 5-10 minutes
-NOTE- the more time you take with this recipe, the better the flavors combine and come to life-I recommend starting it the day before you plan on serving it and allowing it to sit over night in the fridge. The longer it sits, the better it tastes.
Final step- get out your favorite casserole dish, and cover the bottom with your mixture. Fill it up about halfway. Then sprinkle with some of your cheese. After that fill it up to the top with your mixture. Cover it completely with cheese. Bake at 350 for 25-35 min. Cheese will be nice and bubbly and brown. Let it sit for about 5 min so you don't get burned.
-MORE NOTES- this recipe makes enough to feed a small army, but it freezes well-some people like to use the Mexican cheese mix, but I don't. The flavor is not that great for this recipe-and finally, do not use plastic anything while cooking this. Stir with a wooden our metal spoon. The plastic flavor will actually transfer itself to the casserole.

Celery

I decided to go ahead and try growing celery from the bottom of the stalk.  I just put it in one of my many bowls, put a little bit of water in the bowl, and now...we wait!!!  It seems I've learned a lot about waiting since I've started this little farm.

Speaking of waiting...the worst wait for me so far is over!!! The incubator has arrived! I was so excited when I saw the FedEx truck I scared my poor husband awake. I think I nearly gave him a heart attack. He says we should be able to put the eggs in their tonight. Yes...I know, technically I'm supposed to let it sit overnight...but I'm at least letting it sit 8 hours.

Day on the Farm

So today was a busy day here on my little farm.  Other than doing the domestic goddess work, I also finished harvesting the worm tub I started harvesting yesterday. I put a bunch of fallen leaves in there with them. Worms like that kind of stuff!  This tub was going to get divided in half, but I realized as I was prepping it, that we got a tub that is twice the size of the tubs we had been getting. I'm not sure how we did that, other than we weren't paying attention to what we were getting because it was the same color as the other tubs we normally get. So, I didn't divide it up, I'll still have 2 extra tubs, I'll just divide up 2 other tubs. In all honesty I think there is only one other tub that really needs to be divided up, the other two tubs were made a couple of months ago, they were split from our original tub.

Then of course I've spent the day checking on my flock of chickens a little extra today. I'm gathering eggs for the incubator. Its due to be here tomorrow or Friday. I'm looking so forward to that!!! (well obviously I am because I'm already saving eggs!!!) I think its going to be hard when we get to the part where we butcher what was once a cute adorable little chick....one that we raised from an egg, but when I think about all of the nourishment its going to provide us over the winter time next winter...(yeah, I know we are planning our pantry for a year from now...crazy) Its kind of hard to figure I guess.

I've also been plotting and planning for the spring gardening as well. Its never too early to start thinking about that. I'm researching different strains of vegetables that will grow better in our soil. We are working pretty hard to try and get our garden soil better. The first step we took was by starting a compost pile when we got the chickens. From there I have a bucket underneath of my sink that I dump out there a couple of times a week. We are going to have to turn the pile here soon though, I'm not sure how hard or easy its going to be. Everything on the bottom of the pile is old bedding from out of the chicken coop, and its filled with chicken poop...then there is the layers of kitchen waste, egg shells, coffee grounds and scrapings from our dinner plates, and then there is some grass clippings where my husband tries to rake as much onto it as possible, when he mows the lawn, and some more bedding, chicken poo where I go ahead and scrape some of the poop out of the coops, and off of the coops into a bucket and dump on there...well you get the idea. What's on the bottoms has been there for several months now, and I'm assuming its going to be good to get it turned. I'm not really sure how often your supposed to turn a compost pile though, I may have to do a bit of research that.

I've found some really interesting links for some different things that I find helpful and just neat that I plan on trying. I'll be putting some links up in a blog post sometime in the near future for your viewing enjoyment.

Well folks, I think its time for this little Farm woman to retire for the night.
Sleep tight!!! And happy farming!!!

Worms

I've been working on harvesting my worm tubs. I was doing the one by hand so that I could get an idea as to how many cocoons I would find. I need to finish that tub, but I'll finish it up this evening. The other 4 I'll use the harvester my hubby made for me.