This & That

As you can see the kids have been busy this winter. They went out ice fishing more times this year than ever before thanks to their Dad. To the right here is the fish chowder John made from those critters last night for our family and his parents. It was quite a hit! The recipe came from "Cooking Wild" by Ken Allen who lives in Belgrade. It is a one of a kind cook book that John's mother bought him. Ken Allen is a veteran outdoors man and gourmet cook. The book is based on the wild foods available to us in New England and is sorted out by months. Many of the recipes have a quaint tale that goes along. It includes a variety of unique recipes including bear chops, fricasseed squirrel, and sauteed cattails.

The count down goes on for the goats...5 more days. We are trying to come up with some names. On Tuesday we are getting 100 more chicks (Red Stars). John has ordered over 200 but they seem to be in big demand, so far and we are down to 36, 10 Barred Rocks and the rest are Rhode Island Reds , 12 of them we are boarding. The rest we will keep along some of the new chicks. Our plan is to have our own fresh egg supply and sell some at the farm stand we plan to have this summer.
I am looking forward to loosing this snow and the arrival of the yellow daffodils around the borders of our land. I am also anxious to get the Bam Bam & Pebbles (the ducks) out of the barn and into the pond.
The garden will be bigger then ever before. We plan to preserve and fill our root cellar in addition to selling a little. We were a little excitable and already have 4 tomato plants that are a foot tall and some cucumbers that have several flowers started. I also have started some peppers and a few flowers and asparagus from seed, we should be able to harvest that in about 4 years. I am trying to talk John into building me a greenhouse, we will see.
Enough for now, off to bring the kids to swim lessons.