Peaches and Traveling Chickens

Ah, peaches! Is there a fruit that is quite as fragrant, sweet and delicious as a fresh picked peach? I think not. You might disagree, but this week, peaches rule, with strawberries running a close second.

Last week Barry went to divest the larger peach tree of a few green peaches so the rest of the fruit would grow better.

He came back with a pail of the little round golf balls, which didn't taste much like peaches yet.

What to do with a bucket of green peaches? Well, after much googling and recipe book plundering, I decided on the easiest recipe I could find (and there aren't many for green peaches, I tell ya): Pickled Green Peaches. I used a mix of cider vinegar, sugar and spices. The house smelled great all day. Then I canned up a few jars for later in the summer. I also pickled a few of the small onions from the garden. I really enjoy doing it, and it always reminds me of my mother who canned like crazy every summer. We were eating her jams, pickles, tomato sauce, peaches and watermelon rinds until January.


Chickens on the Move

Last Friday was the Day We Moved the Chickens. Remember Barry had built a chicken tractor for the new laying hens (a chicken tractor is just a movable chicken pen, no tractor required, but a good lawnmower is helpful). So in the morning before letting out the little chickens we hooked up the lawnmower to the chicken tractor and took off through the field to it's new home. We'll move it every week so they have new pasture to mow down, and when they are big enough they'll get the run of the field.


Step one: pull it through the first gate. Oh, don't forget to lock up the dogs or they'll run amuck.










Step two: don't hit the turkey tractor on your way by.












Step Three: Go all the way to where you want to drop it off, then stop.





Step four: Make sure you have enough muscle to haul the outdoor cage area over to in front of the house. Barry loves building things that last. Forever, and ever. This thing is HEAVY!














Step Five: Release the chickens! Oh, and close the door, fast!

They are getting so big, these once small chicklets.









Here is Barry ploughing the field for our potatoes and corn that we have since planted. He loves playing on his tractor. It is a Massey-Ferguson, 1959.









Random photo of Lysander eating the tall grass. I have no idea why he does it. After he eats a few blades he'll pee on the bottom of it. Nice.

"Therrrrs a Moose in the Hoose!"

Earlier this year (February, I think) Barry called me one night after rehearsal while I was driving home.

Barry: We have a moose in the hoose (imagine a Scot's dialect).
Sally: A what?
B: A moose! A mouse.
S: A mouse? You're sure? Not a rat?
B: No, a mouse with big ears. It ran behind the telly and into the heat vent.
S: Hmm..

So when I get home I set a trap for little mousie. Four months later I've heard him several times, but never actually seen said 'moose' and the traps have been totally ignored. Then the other day I open my cupboard to get out some flour and notice that my flour bag has a hole in it. "BAD WORDS, BAD WORDS!!!" were said profusly. So our little mouse was doing more than scurrying about being cute, huh?

Well, actually, I had seen evidence of him in the closet where I had hung my ham to cure. Lucky for me the mouse doesn't like cracked pepper, so he only chewed through the wrapping and when he got to the ham covered in pepper he must have sneezed and walked away as no damage was done to the ham. (NB: Alison will be glad to hear that yes, this is THE ham she has been waiting for lo these many years. Should be ready by end of summer.) The hams have been re-wrapped and now hang safely in the kitchen where I can keep an eye on them. Have I mentioned I love the tall ceilings in our house?Anyway, back to the mouse. After saving what flour I could (he'd only chewed through the bottom corner, I set the mousetrap, covered it in flour and left it where the bag had been.

Tick, tock...

Next morning Barry is out working on a landscaping job in Tucker, the dogs are all sleeping in their room and I keep hearing this banging sound from the kitchen. I shout "Lysander, stop nosing the cabinet door!", but I realize he is (for once) completely innocent. Ah! Could it be? Has my mousetrap worked? Yes, it has.


I open the cabinet door to find flour everywhere and a little mouse with his food caught in the trap desperately trying to get away. "Got you now you little thief!", I say as I think about offing the little guy. But when I pick up the trap I see that I have caught, not an ordinary mouse, but a Disney Mouse, ala Desperaux. Great big ears, big dark eyes looking at me with sadness. Crap. He's too cute to kill. Crap. What do I do now? Okay, after a quick phone call to Barry, I grab a Mason jar, put the trap and mouse down into it and open the trap enough to free the mouse foot. I can tell his leg is broken, but otherwise he is very active and aware, and even jumps up to try and escape the jar.


The dogs were fascinated by the little thing moving in the jar. Kiki jumped up on the bench to have a closer look. Knowing my dogs they wouldn't have done anything to him but watched him run away, should they have gotten the chance to 'play' with him. He's too small even for a snack.




.


...In the end, I decided to let him go back into the wild, but far from our house so we didn't have him return and commit more heinous crimes. I took him about three miles away to "The Farm" where the Apparition of the Virgin Mary apparently showed herself from 1990-98.

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-750

Oddly, this is one of the first weird news stories I remember upon moving to Atlanta in 1990. I thought, "Wow, glad I don't live near that crazy Conyers. It's waaaay OTP* anyway". Big LOL!!! Now I'm living less than three miles from the site. Life is strange, isn't it?

I figure a little lame mouse needs all the help he can get, and at least he won't be eating my flour any more.











*OTP for non Atlantans is 'Outside the Perimeter', which is the I-285 corridor, and those living OTP are either bumpkins, boring farts, or Republicans. I am none of the above, but think farmer should be added to the list for OTPers.

Strawberry Shortcakes

I found this great food website: smittenkitchen.com, with this gorgeous strawberry shortcake recipe. So I made it. She is right, the shortcakes are the best I've ever had. I was brought up on those spongy yellow discs (which I loved as a kid), and I'm not a big fan of the traditional biscuit shortcake I've had in the south. But now, now I have a shortcake recipe I can really enjoy.

Dessert, anyone?

Strawberry Shortcakes

Adapted from Claudia Fleming and Russ Parsons

Serves 6

1 2/3 cups (224 grams) all-purpose flour
3 1/2 tablespoons (50 grams) sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1/2 teaspoon (20 grams) baking powder
2 hard-boiled egg yolks
1/8 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons (84 grams) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 teaspoons lemon or orange zest (optional)
2/3 cup (168 grams) plus 1 tablespoon heavy cream

Shortcake assembly
1/2 pound strawberries, washed, hulled and quartered
2 tablespoons (25 grams) sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 cup whipping cream, beaten to soft peaks

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, sugar, bak

ing powder, egg yolks, and salt. Pulse to combine. Add the butter and zest, if using, and pulse until the flour resembles coarse meal. Add 2/3 cup of cream and pulse until the dough comes together.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and gather into a shaggy mass. Knead a couple times to make it into a cohesive mass and then pat it into a rough circle about 6 to 7 inches in diameter, and 3/4 to 1-inch thick.

Using a sharp knife, cut the circle into 6 wedges and arrange on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Alternately, you can use a cookie cutter to make shapes of your choice. Chill for 20 minutes (and up to 2 hours).

Preheat oven to 350°F. Brush the tops of the shortcakes very lightly with heavy cream and sprinkle lightly with the coarse sugar. Bake until risen and golden brown, 18 to 20 minutes. Turn the pan around halfway through to ensure even cooking.

While the shortcakes are baking, toss the strawberries, sugar and lemon juice together in a bowl. Let stand several minutes. (If the strawberries are extremely firm, do this 30 minutes in advance.)

Split the shortcakes in half horizontally and set the tops aside. Place the bottoms on dessert plates and heap strawberries over them. Spoon whipped cream generously over the strawberries and replace the shortcake tops. Serve immediately with any remaining whipped cream on the side.

And now....The Bees!

Today is a hot one. It registers 87 degrees in the shade, but the humidity makes it very heavy. I can tell when it is really hot because the dogs just flop down on the wood floors like rugs and you can't move them.

I also found out that today was hot for the bees. I went out to see them this afternoon (no rain today, yippee!) and found them happily making honey and hatching baby bees. Bees fan their wings when they are trying to cool down the hive (or heat it up in winter), and when I opened up the hive I saw several 'cooling bees' doing their thing. There weren't a lot of them, but enough so that I propped open the top of the hive a quarter inch just to keep the breeze moving. I have a screened bottom board (the very bottom level of the hive), so there is good ventilation, but I wanted to make sure the veranda was good sitting weather for them.

Here they are being the busy bees they naturally tend toward. Yes, that saying does ring true. "Busy as a bee" is busy.

The dark holes are where worker babies have hatched and are now going about their business, usually cleaning the cells and hive of trash. These two pictures are of the brood frames where the queen lays eggs and little bees grow and are born.



This is a photo looking down inside with two frames removed. They really like working on the four frames they came with, rather than my frames. Many experienced bee keepers tell me it is because they are plastic, which may be true, but I also don't want unknown beeswax to start my hive because you never know what is in it. So I'm trying plastic frames. Next year I'm going to try totally frame-less, so I'm really bucking the system then.






This frame is going to be filled with honey when completed.

Here they are working on one of the new plastic frames. The actual plastic is black, so you can see they are doing a good job of 'pulling out' the comb. They make it themselves from glands on the undersides of their thorax. I can see some bees walking around on the hive with what look like pale water wings on their legs. That is the bees wax they are getting ready to deposit into comb. Fascinating creatures.

Food on the table

Just a quick foodie update for those interested. For Memorial Day I made a lovely apple tart to take to an outing. Here is what it looked like pre-oven:












And here is the finished tart. Mmm...yummy. I also made some whipped cream to top it off. It turned out very well, so I'm including the recipe below.









You can find great pictures of each step here:
http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/11/simplest-apple-tart/

Alice Waters’s Apple Tart

INGREDIENTS:
For dough:
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, just softened, cut in 1/2-inch pieces
3 1/2 tablespoons chilled water

For filling:
2 pounds apples (Golden Delicious or another tart, firm variety), peeled, cored (save peels and cores), and sliced
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
5 tablespoons sugar

For glaze: 1/2 cup sugar

MIX flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl; add 2 tablespoons of the butter. Blend in a mixer until dough resembles coarse cornmeal. Add remaining butter; mix until biggest pieces look like large peas.

DRIBBLE in water, stir, then dribble in more, until dough just holds together. Toss with hands, letting it fall through fingers, until it’s ropy with some dry patches. If dry patches predominate, add another tablespoon water. Keep tossing until you can roll dough into a ball. Flatten into a 4-inch-thick disk; refrigerate. After at least 30 minutes, remove; let soften so it’s malleable but still cold. Smooth cracks at edges. On a lightly floured surface, roll into a 14-inch circle about 1/8 inch thick. Dust excess flour from both sides with a dry pastry brush.

PLACE dough in a lightly greased 9-inch round tart pan, or simply on a parchment-lined baking sheet if you wish to go free-form, or galette-style with it. Heat oven to 400°F. (If you have a pizza stone, place it in the center of the rack.)

OVERLAP apples on dough in a ring 2 inches from edge if going galette-style, or up to the sides if using the tart pan. Continue inward until you reach the center. Fold any dough hanging over pan back onto itself; crimp edges at 1-inch intervals.

BRUSH melted butter over apples and onto dough edge. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons sugar over dough edge and the other 3 tablespoons over apples. (Deb note: I found it nearly impossible to coat it with this much sugar, so I used a little less–more like 3 tablespoons. It made a lightly sweet tart, which we found perfect.)

BAKE in center of oven until apples are soft, with browned edges, and crust has caramelized to a dark golden brown (about 45 minutes), making sure to rotate tart every 15 minutes.

MAKE glaze: Put reserved peels and cores in a large saucepan, along with sugar. Pour in just enough water to cover; simmer for 25 minutes. Strain syrup through cheesecloth.

REMOVE tart from oven, and slide off parchment onto cooling rack. Let cool at least 15 minutes.

BRUSH glaze over tart, slice, and serve.

More food? Yes, of course!


This is a savory pie I made this week. It has meaty insides of heart and liver of pork, potatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, beets, tomatoes, cheese and a cheddar cheesy crust on top. It turned out "bloody good!" according to the Welshman. :0)










This is the impromptu salad I served with the pie. Lettuce from the garden, tomatoes, basil, mozzarella cheese, olives with balsamic vinegar and olive oil drizzle. I love summer foods!

Farm Photo'palooza

I've been taking a lot of photos lately. So much going on here at the farm in Springtime. Here are some of my favorite.



This is Mary with her future Thanksgiving dinner.



One of two peach trees in the dog run. This one looks to be ripening up first.







Mmmm...peaches.












Barry's newest creation: The Turkey House. Looks a bit like Turkey-Alcatraz to me, but I'm sure with some wall to wall carpet, a wetbar and grill they will be quite happy out there.

It's Barry-sized! I told him if he makes me mad I'll lock him inside. No way he's getting out through the turkey entrance. Bwa ha ha ha ha!

The chicken run, with chickens.

Two of the Silver Lace Wyandotte chicks.

My garden in the Amazon rain forest. I can't keep up with the weeds. The Scarlet runner beans are doing well, though.
Tomatoes, basil, peppers and potatoes in the background.
My garlic. I am thrilled with how it is coming along. All organic from organic stock at Hood River Farms in Oregon.





A butterfly plant of some kind in the garden. We had so many butterflies last summer it was like we lived at Calloway Gardens.




A lily and spiderwort behind.














We mow the field. The first pic is Barry, the other is me driving the beast through the trees.


















More Cochin eggs, eleven in all waiting to become baby chicks.















Water lilies? They are in the water pond and they are lilies...left by former owners. I love the little 'barrel pond'.



















Our rooster, Big Boy. He has spurs three inches long, but he is as sweet as he can be to humans. Barry talks to him and the rooster seems to react to him. He's a good rooster.

That's Harriet the Pekin Duck sitting down, and one of our Khaki Cambell's in the background on the left.

Evening with Friends

The other evening we were pleased to entertain
our friends Susan and Mary at the Farm. I fired up the grill and made some spice and dark sugar-rubbed true country ribs, Vidalia onions and carrots. Mary brought potato salad and watermelon. We had a great time drinking Firefly Iced Tea with lemonade, playing with the turkeys and having a grand old time. I also tried out a new recipe for Sweet Potato Biscuits.

I'm not normally a biscuit kind of girl. I'm from Iowa, and biscuits are nice, but not a religion like they are here in the south. However, since I'm a recipe tester for a cooking magazine and this month's test recipe was Sweet Potato Biscuits-re do, I decided to make them for our discriminating Southern-born friends. They received four human thumbs-up reviews, and several paws-up reviews from the dog audience gathered in the kitchen. Later that evening Mary's dog, Dudley the Deadly Dachshund, pinched and ate every biscuit I sent home with them. That was okay as he needed to gain a few ounces, anyway, but here's the recipe so Mary can make some more, and you can too. And yes, I do cook with lard. If you haven't heard, that solid vegetable shortening can kill you. Non-hydrogenated lard is wonderful stuff. 'Nuf said.
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Sweet Potato Biscuits
Makes 16 biscuits

2 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes (4-5 medium)
2 T cider vinegar
3 1/4 cups cake flour
1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
5 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1 1/2 t salt
8 T (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces, chilled
2 T unsalted butter, melted
4 T lard, cut into small pieces

1. MICROWAVE POTATOES: prick potatoes all over with fork. Microwave until skin is wet and potatoes are very soft, 15-20 min., flipping enough to handle, scoop flesh into bowl and mash until smooth. (You should have two cups. If you have excess, reserve for another purpose.) Stir in vinegar. Refrigerate until cool, about 15 minutes.

2. MAKE DOUGH: Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 425 degrees. Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Pulse flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, chilled butter, and lard in a food processor until mixture resembles coarse meal. Transfer to bowl with cool potatoes and fold with rubber spatula until incorporated.

3. FORM BISCUITS: Turn dough out onto floured surface and knead until smooth, 8-10 times. Pat dough into 9-inch circle, about 1-inch thick. Using a 2 1/2 inch biscuit cutter (or glass) dipped in flour, cut out biscuits and arrange on prepared baking sheet. Pat remaining dough into 1-inch-thick circle and cut out more biscuits.

4. BAKE: Brush prepared biscuits with melted butter. Bake until golden brown, 18-22 minutes. Let cool 15 minutes. Serve slathered with butter or jam or sandwiched with ham and mustard.