Today's Take - 6/8/2015

Three out of four of our broody mama ducks finally hatched out their babies this week! Blueberry & Drusilla each had five babies, Kiki hatched out three. Now hopefully they'll get back to laying some of their wonderful eggs for us.

The garden is finally starting to feed us. ;) Peas, lettuce, herbs and raspberries are starting to roll in and we're really enjoying the homegrown salads every night.

For the record -
Chicken eggs - 10
Snow peas - 8 oz
Buttercrunch lettuce - 1 head

Recipe: Duck Egg Noodles

These simple and delicious, homemade egg noodles, made using our Muscovy and Black Swedish duck eggs, were a hit with the whole family! I added 1/4 cup of blanched, finely chopped stinging nettles to this batch as well, as I had them on hand. You can take or leave the addition, or substitute your family's favorite fresh herbs, kale, citrus zest or a bit of beet or pumpkin puree to mix things up a bit. 

Fresh duck egg and stinging nettle noodles

An eggy windfall - where it all begins!

Duck Egg Noodles

-3 cups all purpose flour (plus extra for rolling out)

-2 whole eggs

-4 egg yolks

-2 tsps salt

-2-3 tbsps water, more or less*

-1/4 cup blanched, well drained, chopped stinging nettles (or chopped herbs, kale, etc.) *optional*

Start with your flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the middle for your eggs & yolks. Gently scramble the eggs with a fork, slowly beginning to incorporate the flour/salt mixture. Once the eggs and dry ingredients are well mixed, begin adding water in small increments, kneading and squeezing the dough together after each addition. Continue adding water as needed to the dough to reach your desired consistency. Now it's time to fold in the nettles. Knead them into the dough well, until the are mixed evenly throughout. Allow the dough to rest for at least 10 or 15 minutes before rolling out. I run my dough through the pasta roller attachment on my Kitchenaid mixer, rather than rolling the dough out by hand.** 

After rolling out into sheets, I let the dough rest/dry again for at least 10 minutes or so before cutting into individual noodles.

I most often use the fettuccine attachment to make the final cuts, but rolling and cutting by hand with the kiddos is just as good a method (if a slightly messier one) for getting 'er done. 

I freeze any pasta that I don't use immediately by laying the finished (uncooked) noodles in a single layer on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and popping them in the freezer until thoroughly frozen, then transferring them to gallon freezer bags for storage. If you skip the cookie sheet step, and put them straight into the bag, you may end up with a giant noodle octopus rather than nice, individual noodles. ;)  I've had mixed success with drying them, but you're welcome to give that a go if your freezer space is at a premium.

*Because duck egg whites are significantly more viscous than chicken egg whites. You will likely need more water (or other optional liquid/puree, if using) than the 2-3 tbsps called for here.

**If you'll be using a similar pasta making attachment, I recommend starting at thickness setting #1, and running the dough through again on setting #3, and lastly, #5. Eggs noodles are meant to me a little beefy and chewy, so thinning them out further is just not necessary, and makes a lot more work, in my humble opinion. ;)

Playing Catch-up

Birthday season, for the most part, has come and gone, allowing us to focus a slightly larger portion of our time and money on gettin' 'er done around the house and farm. A few developments since I've last posted -

I think she thinks she's invisible.

*Blueberry, a Muscovy hen, has made the executive decision to go bat-crap broody, and sit on a fairly-well hidden clutch of eggs. She's rarely off the nest, but based on the few quick glances that I've had of the clutch, I'd say she's got at least 15 or 20 eggs in there. If you happen to be one of our egg customers, this may help explain why the duck eggs have been fewer and farther between these past few weeks. But...

*We have another half-dozen layers just around the corner! The Khaki Campbell girls are now almost 8 weeks old, and have been integrated into the main flock. They seem to have unanimously chosen Kiki, our black Swedish hen, as their mama. "Keeks" seems mostly indifferent to her new brood, but to her credit, does not seem to mind overly much that they follow her every move. Kiki's fella, Tombo, thought he hit the jackpot when his harem grew by six laydies overnight. Alas, he was too... er... vigorous in his attentions and traumatized the heck out of the Khaki girls. And so, Tommy-boy is living in the ducky bachelor pad chicken tractor for now, where he can see, hear and chat with his gals, but not have direct "encounters" with them. He'll stay there until - a) the Khakis are fully mature, b) he learns how to be a gentleman, or c) we re-home him. We'll play it by ear.

Kiki and her little 'uns.

*Our eleven 8-week old chicks have also transitioned into living with the main flock. So far, so good.

*We've been averaging about 10 chicken eggs, and 1 or 2 duck eggs per day from the laydies.

*I planted a whole bed of carrots this past weekend. Half are Cosmic Purples and half are Red-cored Chantenay. I also started a second plot of Watermelon Radishes.

*The new beehives are doing pretty well. The Langstroth hive started to build a bit of cross-comb, which Billy cleaned up, but other than that, everybody appears to be settling in nicely.

*We're gearing up to make our first batch of soap of the season - Dandelion & Honey, provided that the bees don't begrudge us a little of the sweet stuff. The next batch on deck is Sugar Pumpkin & Spice, with homegrown pumpkin. :)

*We've had some fun and different bird sightings over the past few weeks - male and female Rufous Hummingbirds, California Quail, and a very vocal Raven.

And that's about it, I think. I need to get crackin' in the garden this coming weekend - cilantro, spearmint and kale are on deck fo' sho', with chamomile, thyme, calendula, breadseed poppies and borage to follow soon after.

Today's Take - 4/12/2015

For the record -
Duck eggs - 4
Chicken eggs - 9 (10 if you count the one that was eaten/smashed by the hens)

In the garden -
Weeded the peas/onions/radish bed, and plugged in a few more onions in the empty spots where onions failed to come up. Planted half a bed of Lutz Tall Top Beets. The carrots, kale and rat-tail radishes are hopefully going in sometime this week.

The seeds started under the grow lights are doing well. They're finally starting to all get their first set of true leaves.

Today's Take - 4/8/15

For the record -
Duck eggs - 1
Chicken eggs - 6

In the garden -
Planted the 2nd batch of potatoes today. I used "Smart Pots", similar to Root Pouches, but quite a bit thicker. The other difference from batch #1 is that I used fairly fresh rabbit poo as the fertilizer this time, rather than the kitchen scraps/goat poo/chicken poo compost mix that I used before.

Today's Take - 4/4/2015

The chickens and ducks have both been doing a nice job laying as of late. Despite one duck and several hens going broody on us, practically overnight, we've been managing to average a dozen or better eggs per day between the clucks & quacks.

We also just harvested our first garden produce of the year, some humongous stalks of Victoria rhubarb. I wish that I had some of last summer's blueberries still in the freezer, because a "bluebarb" cobbler sounds fantastic right about now. Ah well, the 'barb is in the freezer now, waiting on berry season. :)

For the record -
Chicken eggs - 13
Duck eggs - 2
Rhubarb - 1 1/2 pounds

In the Garden -
Planted 3-25 gallon root pouches with a little more than half of our seed potatoes. We're growing Yukon Gold, Purple Majesty and Rose Finn Apple. I put about 3" of our homegrown compost in the bottom of each container, followed by another 3-4" of Gardener & Bloom "raised bed" soil, with a handful of kelp meal mixed in, then the seed pa-tay-ters, followed by another 3" (more or less) of very loose G&B soil. The Purple Majesties already had good 2-3" sprouts on each of the tubers, so I'm hoping to see some foliage from them first.

I'm planting the remaining half of the seed potatoes (again, in root pouches) next to our back balcony. Come harvest time, we'll see which batch performed the best.

Today's Take - 3/29/2015

Just a quickie, since I'm crazy whooped tonight.

For the record:

Duck Eggs - 4
Chicken Eggs - 11 (5 more and we'll be running at full capacity! Yay!)

In the garden:

Planted another 20 Yellow Rock onion sets in the same bed as the first lot, since the first planting have come up a bit spottily.

Bill planted a bed full of strawberries, a mixture of Benton, Quinault and TriStar, I believe. Some of them were already beginning to bloom.

Scatter-sewed a mixture of lettuce seeds over about 6 feet of bed space. The varieties in the mix are - Merveille de Quatre Saisons, Buttercrunch, Red Romaine, Cimmaron and Rouge d'Hiver. I treat them all as cut-and-come-again, so we should have a very interesting, hopefully long-lasting bunch of salad greens this Spring & Summer.

2 Days' Take - 3/24 & 3/25/2015

The rain has been very limiting in terms of getting to play and work outside. I think I'm ready for May to be here, like, now.

Since the weather has me somewhat house-bound, I've tried to put that time to good use reading a whole mess of farming, gardening and homesteading books, including -

*The Complete Book of Potatoes
*Organic Gardener's Composting
*Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades
*Success with Organic Vegetables
*Top Bar Beekeeping
*Super Formulas - How to make more than 360 useful products that contain honey and beeswax
*The Candlemaker's Companion

I really look forward to making my next batch of soap, even if it won't be a goat milk soap this time. I'm planning on trying out a recipe for a Pumpkin & Spice bar using the last bit of pumpkin puree that we have in the freezer from last Fall's sugar pie pumpkins. Hopefully we'll be able to incorporate a little of our honey and/or beeswax into that batch as well. That is, if we're able to rob the hives anytime soon. But first, this stinkin' rain would have to let up!

For the record -
Duck Eggs - 5
Chicken Eggs - 14

2 Days' Take - 3/22 & 3/23/2015

Nothing too much happening here - rain, rain and more rain. Bleh.

In spite of the dreary weather, Scarlet and I went nettle picking on Sunday. I didn't think to weigh my take before blanching them, but it amounted to about 1/3 of a paper grocery bag full. Not too bad for an hour's walk in the woods!

Beyond the nettles. nothing but eggs. I'm hoping we'll have a good amount of them collected and ready for sale by next weekend in advance of Easter. Speaking of which, the girls and I will have to try using one of our big ol' duck eggs for making pysanky this year. :)

For the record -

Duck Eggs - 8
Chicken Eggs - 12
Stinging Nettles - 12 (+/-) loosely packed cups' worth (before blanching)

Today's Take - 3/21/2015

It was a fairly productive day today - 14 eggs collected and the two mean Muscovy drakes harvested and in the freezer. Tomorrow, I hope to get out for a bit and pick some nettles while the gettin' is still good.

We're also going to attempt to integrate our "tractor girls" into the main flock of chickens tomorrow. Here's hoping that the pecking order shake-up doesn't get too hairy before everyone settles in.

I may divide raspberry canes and  put more radishes in tomorrow, if the weather and the limits of my energy permit. It's 50/50 at this point... ;)

For the record -
Duck Eggs - 5
Chicken Eggs - 9
Ducks, butchered - 2 (dressed out weight was 5 pounds +/- each)

Today's Take - 3/20/15

Happy first day of Spring!

The Farm Stand will be open tomorrow from 10ish-7ish, and we'll have nuttin' but eggs this time around, as nothing in the garden is happening yet.

As for the eggs - boy can it vary from day to day. Two of the Muscovy hens seem to have gone broody on me already, and are doing their level best to stash their eggs in increasingly harder to find nests. Today they stumped me, and so we ended up with only two duck eggs from the two gals sensible enough to lay them in the duck house - Kiki, the Black Swedish, and Cocoa Bean, a Muscovy. Merci, mesdames. Now - if you could show your sisters how to nest in a nice, easy to find spot, that'd be great.

Whilst hunting high and low for duck eggs that weren't ever to be found, I noticed that the maple trees have begun to flower. Now if the dang rain would let up a bit, our bees could get out there and go ape on those blossoms. Maple blossom honey sounds divine!

For the record -
Duck Eggs - 2
Chicken Eggs - 7

Today's Take - 3/19/15

Just a quickie - two birthdays, a band concert and helping my teenager get ready for her Sadie Hawkins dance have handed my butt to me this week. Blehhh.

The good news is that Spring begins tomorrow!

For the record -
Duck Eggs - 4
Chicken Eggs - 5

In the garden -
More peas popped up overnight, and the first onion green has come up. :)

Today's Take - 3/18/15

Whoopsie - birthday mania sort of got in the way of my posting for the past few days. But we're done with that until next month, when the birthday crazy train comes back around. In the mean time, I'll try to hold up my end and faithfully record the Hollow's happenings. :)

The plan I had for putting my slacking Ameracauna hen in the chicken tractor? That didn't happen. Instead, we put the 8 new laying hens that we just bought into the tractor and set them to work tearing up weeds for us. I think the results speak for themselves -

Day 3 - the tractor has been moved twice.

Not too shabby, eh? In addition to the yard work, they've laid us half a dozen eggs so far as well. Pretty good considering that they just went through a pretty dramatic life change.

On the same day that we got the new layers, we also got a mated pair of ducks from the same farm. The drake, "Tombo" is a beautiful I-have-no-idea-what-breed, but, in the way that good looking fellas so often are, seems to be a bit of a jerk. Whereas his lady love, "Kiki" a Black Swedish, is sweet as can be and a faithful layer of huge, pale blueish-grey eggs.

Between Kiki and the 'scovy girls suddenly deciding to lay, we've abruptly gone from no duck eggs at all to 4 per day. And in August/September, our 6 Khaki Campbell ducklings should begin laying as well. That's the thing about farming - you can go from feast to famine and back again just like that - which is why we don't take a second of it for granted.

For the record -
*Duck eggs - 5 (must have missed one yesterday!)
*Chicken eggs - 6

In the garden -
*Bill weeded 8 beds
*I planted 4 short rows of Watermelon radishes, with the plan to start 4 more in a week's time
*The peas we planted about three(?) weeks ago are finally starting to poke their heads up!

Today's Take - 3/15/15

It was a rainy, blustery day today, very fitting for the Ides of March. I really hope that the weather settles down soon, so that we can re-open the farm stand, as the eggs are piling up quickly, with even more layers coming on board starting tomorrow. :)

We're picking up 8 new-to-us laying hens and 2 ducks from a fellow farmer who recently sold her farm. That means that we will potentially be getting a total of 16 chicken eggs and 4 duck eggs per day very shortly. Exciting!

The timing is perfect, since the South South Direct Sales Farm Map just came out, and this year, we're listed. With our little farm stand now literally on the map, we're looking forward to getting more traffic, meeting new neighbors and selling them some of our fantastic eggs.

For the record -
Chicken Eggs - 6
Duck Eggs - 2

Today's Take - 3/14/15

I was beginning to wonder if our Muscovy girls were ever going to give us an egg, when viola!, Bill found a small nest of three eggs in a pile of loose orchard grass hay in the goats' milking shed. The milking shed has been the place that the Muscovies have been hanging out whenever they manage to break out of the duck yard, which is a very regular occurrence. I should have known they were up to something!
Shortly after finding the first three, we found another egg in the duck house. Yeehaw!

The goods!

We're going to try these tomorrow, as none of us has ever tasted a duck egg before. I've been told that frying them is slightly trickier than a chicken's egg, as they can get overcooked and rubbery pretty easily. I think I'll scramble them this first time around. I don't want to take a chance on cooking them wrong and souring us all on eating duck eggs the first time out of the gate.

For the record -
Duck eggs (woohoo!) - 4
Chicken eggs - 6

Today's Take - 3/13/15

Nothing much (again) today, just three eggs, all of them brown. Hmm.... someone... or rather, 5 someones... are slacking!

I know that one of my slackers is Bedelia, a 2-year old Americauna hen. Even on a good day, when I get a blue egg in the nestbox, I can always attribute it to our only other Americauna, Snow White, who I see in the nest box each and every morning. I haven't seen Bedelia in the box a single time yet this season. I suspect that she is laying, but not where she's supposed to. I have a plan to test this theory, starting tomorrow, bright and early. Bwahaha!

Bedelia, our suspected shirker.

Snow White, reliable provider of beautiful blue eggs

Here's what I'm thinking - I have a flower bed that I need turned over, ASAP. I also have a brand-spankin'-new used chicken tractor that just so happens to be a near-perfect fit for my weedy bed. So, Bedelia and a brown egg laying pal (or two) will spend the day working the flower bed for me, during which time they will also hopefully lay a few eggs. If I end up with a blue one at the end of the day, it'll confirm my suspicion that Miss B is actively laying, just nowhere that I can find them. Exactly what I'll do with that information, well, I haven't got that far yet. ;)

Anyway, today was a three egg day. Hopefully tomorrow, the laydies will step up their game and give us a half dozen or more. A chicken lady can dream.

Today's Take - 8/5/13

Zucchini - 6 pounds, 12 ounces!
Yellow squash - 3 pounds
Peas - 2 ounces
Chamomile - big handful
Goat milk - 1/2 gallon
Eggs - 7

Squashapalooza!

Today's Take - 7/23/13

On my garden walk today I noticed several of Bill's Italian bees working the heck out of the borage. :) I'm glad that they like it, because the stuff is threatening to take over the whole flower bed! The lemon cucumbers are setting fruit like mad, though none have ripened yet. I hope they keep pumping them out until market time in August!

Zucchini - 7 ounces
Peas - handful
Golden beets - 2 pounds (These are the last of them. They were too small to harvest, but had been so ravaged by slugs that I thought I'd pull them and feed them to the piggies before the dang slugs could eat them completely.)
Eggs - 6
Goat milk - 1/2 gallon

I heard a pair of ravens gwawping just outside today. I find them and their intellect fascinating, but my interest is tempered by fear for my poultry. I have heard more than a few stories lately about ravens flying off with eggs, young birds, etc., and our Brahma-caunas are still petite - maybe 2 pounds each - which sounds like a reasonable serving size for two hungry ravens.

Speaking of birds, last weekend when we were out in Budd Bay, fishing and crabbing for our supper, we got to see a bald eagle up-close and personal as it swooped down to grab our discarded leftover crab bait, some freezer burned flounder. It's easy to forget how massive they are when you ever only see them high above you against a scale-less sky. we do get to see them here at home fairly often, being as close to the water as we are, but when wearing my figurative farmer hat, I am generally less inclined to just sit back and appreciate their size and beauty, and more likely to fret over whether my animals might catch a hungry predator's eye.

Today's Take - 7/22/13

Russian Red kale - 2 pounds, 14 ounces
Basil - 2 1/2 ounces
Golden beets - 2 pounds, 2 ounces (I really need to just pull the rest of these. The slugs seem to love these the best. :\ )
Bulls Blood beets - 2 pounds, 14 ounces
Blackberries - 3 ounces
Eggs - 8
Goat Milk - 1/2 gallon

Today was the first day selling our goodies at our farm stand. I wouldn't have chosen a Monday to start, but the girls were very keen to sell their marionberry lemonade to passersby, so I figured, what the hey? They didn't sell a thing, and ended up drinking all of their own lemonade, but then again, it was a Monday, soo... better luck next time, I hope! If the blueberry farms open this weekend we should see tons of traffic, so hopefully we'll have at least one customer.

Aim high! ;)

Yesterday I forgot to mention that I noticed a bud had formed on one of my Hungarian Blue bread poppies. I don't know why, but growing your own poppy seeds seems so badass to me! I hope that I manage to get a worthwhile amount out of them, or short of that, that they at least self-sow and bring a bigger crop next year.

Today's Take - 7/21/13

As you may have noticed, daily dispatches have been... less than daily. My record-keeping has never been stellar, but I really was hoping to get a whole month straight of farm product on the official record. Guess not. :\

Anyhoo, today's today's take is even better than usual, because we took the boat out in the salt and brought home a few crabbies. Yum!

Fisherman Bill with one of our soon-to-be tasty crab. 

Red Rock Crab - 3
Goat Milk - 1 gallon
Eggs - 9
Blackberries - 4 ounces
Zucchini - 7 ounces
Yellow squash - 5 ounces
Peas - handful (are these things every really going to take off or not?)
Russian Red kale - 8 ounces
Oregano - 1 ounce