It's the simple things.....

100 Muscovy Ducklings.....we will keep a bunch and sell the rest. They are said to be good Mommas and good at reproducing. Oh yes and I hear they are good eats. I have eaten wild duck before and I did not like. We will see!

Turkeys are getting big. We raised 4 last year and we have 5 now. I wonder if the plucker MM built will be able to handle them? In the next couple weeks I will put together the pictures of that and have Maine Man do a post on how he constructed the plucker. Thanks for the book Angie, it was a great reference for John. It came out nicely!

Over the weekend I heard a meowing under the barn and out came this friendly, starving kitty. His name is Grislo thanks to the purple tag. It also had an out of state phone number listed. Called the number, no answer, voice mail in another language. I'm thinking this is a joke, someone dropped him off. Sure enough the owner calls back. He's from 2 towns over and has been missing for a month. As Leah said "back to his righteous owner." Don't ya love happy endings?

Wordless Wednesday

http://www.vintagewings-millersfield.com/fallfoliagetrips2008.html

Aerial photos of Maine's foliage....enjoy, I did! (just a couple words!)

Sweet Smells of Fall

The last two weekends Flower Girl has made applesauce. It was another one of those firsts for me. I had never made homemade applesauce. Isn't that sad? Especially when your 6 year old tells you how to make it then proceeds to make it herself and the only assistance you provide is coring the apples. When she first mentioned that she wanted to do this and she "knows how" because she did it is school I was hesitant for a moment. Then I thought what the heck! Worse case scenario, pig food. It took her about 2 hours peeling, cutting, and then adding it all to a crock. Flower Girl's recipe as follows: "about 17 apples cut up small, 1 cup of honey, and a cup of cinnamon." We decided to do a half a batch and I convinced her to use 1 T. of cinnamon i/o a cup...she agreed and it was the BEST APPLESAUCE we've ever eaten! She cooked it on low over night in a crock and we ate it up in no time. She was some proud and so were we!


With the change of seasons you think of all the chores you won't have to do and then before you know it there is a whole other list of chores and need to do's before the next season.
Winterizing the house, setting up house for the critters in the barn, planting garlic, and back to hauling wood...yes our wood stove has been running for nearly a week. No complaints I feel fortunate that we have the wood to burn and do not have to depend on oil. My Maine Man worked hard all summer and put up about 9 cord. I am so thankful that we have him. Without John, we could not function! There is not a thing he does not do (except toilets and he would if he had to) We love him so and appreciate all he does!
It has been brisk here in Maine and some folks even had a bit of the white stuff today...soon we will be shoveling.

We have also been trying to get caught up on some inside tasks that have been patiently waiting through the gardening season. I've painted both the kids floors, (they have the old wood floors) painted the mud room "barn red" (love the color), and we soon will be putting up trim work in the kitchen....yeah ha, it has been 2 years coming.

I took the turkeys to the butchers last week. That was an experience! They were so big I did not have a cage to hold them so their last hours were on sheets in the back of the heated suburban jamming to "I've got friends in low places" by Garth Brooks. What a way to go.
I had one moment of feeling bad but it quickly passed. They had a good life!
I did not watch them get processed but I watched the ones after except for the initial kill, it was not that bad.

We ate our first "farm fresh turkey" last weekend and it was wicked yummy! (yes I'm a Mainer)
With the left overs I made turkey pie, turkey barley soup, turkey salad, froze a bag for stew and I made stock. We have 3 more in the freezer, the biggest weighed 30lbs.

The Cornish rocks are ready to go to freezer camp too. I am afraid we are going to have to process them ourselves because we cannot get them into the butcher for 3 more weeks and that means lots more grain, these guys are little piggies. More grain= $. I think we(John) will skin some instead of plucking and we will make ground chicken. I like it for meat loaf, spaghetti, and I bet it would make great meatballs.

Have you ever bragged before and it come back and bit you in the a@!? Like, "we haven't been sick all winter" and then you are all nearly hospitalized. For whatever reason this ALWAYS happens to me. I was bragging it up the other day that we had yet to have any predator problems and boom...Bam Bam our white duck gets taken out. Country Boy's duck of course, poor kid, he is starting to think he has a curse...his goat, his cat, now his duck. We discovered this the day after I was reading Hobby Farm Magazine and noticed that a picture I had submitted months before of the two ducks was published. I was so excited I got the kids out of bed to show them.
Funny how that all happened. Now the question is what to do with Pebbles? I say find her a partner and John says "find her a home"...we will see but it needs to be soon because I feel sad for her. I thought about mixing her in with the chickens over the winter because John wants to get ducks in the spring, not sure how she will do.
Next day I find a beheaded partridge....what next?
On a lighter note we got 2 little kitties named Gretta and Cookie...their sweet but mischievous!

Lastly, check out a post that Duane wrote over at the Funny Farm about mushrooms. Thanks Duane for your informative post and for answering my question!

Here is the recipe for TURKEY BARLEY SOUP

Ingredients:

• 6 cups chicken broth or turkey broth
• 1 to 2 cups diced cooked turkey
• 1/2 cup pearl barley
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 2 celery, stalks, chopped
• 3 carrots, sliced
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon dried leaf thyme
• 1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (about 2 teaspoons dried)

Preparation:

Combine broth, turkey, barley, onion, celery, carrots, bay leaf, thyme, marjoram, black pepper and parsley in slow cooker. Cover and cook on LOW for 6 hours, or simmer over low heat on the stovetop for 1 hour, or until the carrots are tender and the barley is soft.
Serves 4 to 6

here is the site the recipe comes from

My Favorite Time of Year

The change of seasons is always a pleasure but fall is my favorite. The smells, the cool air, apple picking, the leaves changing colors and the harvest.

The next few days we will be preparing a roadside set up to sell our cornstalks and pumpkins and we will be decorating around the farm with our bounty. We will also go apple picking. I can't wait! I always dreamed of having a big barn so we could have an annual Halloween Party but now I don't have it in me. In a few years when the kids are done with trick or treating I think we will make that a tradition her at Achorn Farm.

I have a love hate relationship with these guys. I love that I feed them and they will feed us. I love that they eat all of our leftovers. I love that they have rototilled and are in the process of fertilizing us one hell of a garden. I hate the way they squeal when I go out to feed them. I hate that Obama thought my finger was a carrot and nearly drew blood. I hate that they intimidate me.

A couple weeks ago John asked me to come out and help him with the pigs. His plan was to deworm them and take the metal tags out of our 2 auction pigs ears. It ended up being quite a scene! Kind of like a kid in the ER when you restrain them but worse. They squealed so loud my neighbors must of thought we were torturing them. John was the pig wrestler and I was suppose to be playing the Vet role. Luke sat on their shelter and watched, he repeatedly said "Mom lets take pictures for your blog". I think a video would have been more appropriate and we probably could have won "Home Funniest Videos". They would have had to do a lot of bleeping though, I was not impressed! Actually, I quit farming that day too. Like I said before, I am intimidated by the pigs. The tags were difficult to get out of their ears and I was scared to put my hands too close to their mouths. I managed to get 2 of the 4 tags out and get the wormer in ...I think we will summons our neighbor next time because I am all set with pig wrestling. You had to be there to really appreciate this situation.

Can you believe it? John bought me a kitchen aid mixer for my birthday last week. Any tips for bread making with this baby are welcomed!
Late is better then never, right? This was suppose to be posted Monday. The doing not thinking challenge is hosted by Two Frog Home. I am getting 2-3 workouts in a week in (I could step it up a notch), I have yet to return to the gym. I have been eating healthier and I quit diet pepsi last week. I went through caffeine withdrawals for 3 days. I have lost 4 lbs, my goal was to loose 5 by December.

Animals, Animals, and more Animals

We discovered Oreo likes bread after the kids dropped a slice when they were headed to the pond to feed the ducks.

As you can see the goats are abused and neglected....not!

We went to a presentation at Leah's school last night, she "published" a book along with all the other kindergartener's. All the kids in the class except 2 either wrote about their families or their cat. One child made a cook book and my unique little muffin wrote about Spring. She did a great job presenting, she has no fear of crowds. At the end of reading her book she read about the author as follows: "Leah is 6 years old. She lives with her mom, her dad and her brother. She has 1 dog, 3 cats, 100 outside birds, 2 chinchillas, 2 goats, and 10 house birds." The audience all had quite a laugh at that one and probably thought what a bunch of crazies. For the record Leah's hair is wet, not greasy. John gave me grief for posting this picture.

Here is the accurate animal count as of today, it seems to change regularly: 31 laying hens, 1 rooster, 18 partridge, 3 quail , 6 bantam hens, 2 ducks, 4 turkeys, 24 meat birds, 2 goats, 2 chinchillas, 3 cats, 1 dog, 1 parakeet = 101 if I added correctly.. ok yes maybe we are nuts!

Our only rooster. Leah named him "Bob". We have not named the hens because there are too many. We've yet to hear him cock-a-doodle-do.

Finally, a little more room to roam. We plan on making a bigger run for them but this works for now. John is going to make some nesting boxes tomorrow because these gals should be laying by July...just in time for our farm stand.
We have 8 more Barred Rocks but they are in another pen because they are a little younger.

One of the turkeys

Annie

These are the kids catch and release tanks. Top one is for frogs and the bottom one is for snakes.

Quail egg count is up to 3
look how tiny

chicken egg, bantam egg, quail egg

Below are a few pictures from a field trip Leah's class went on today. One more field trip to go and 1 1/2 weeks left of school...the count down is on. I look forward to the kids being home and not having to have a stringent schedule of wake-ups, kid pick ups, bath & bed times. I enjoy the casual times of summer but usually by August we are all ready for school again.


I learned today that the red flap under the beak of a rooster is called a wattle. This obviously is not a rooster but I thought it was cool because this was the cows stall this hen was nesting in.

I want a couple cows grazing in our field! Maybe next year when we have more cash & time to put up fencing. Our to do list before winter is very long.

Some people drink sheep milk, I did not know that either.

I'll end the note with a simple recipe. Last night I marinated some deer steak in this and John cooked it up tonight. I will use again and it will be easiest to find if I have it on my blog and maybe you all might like to try.



Teriyaki Marinade

• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 2 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
• 1/3 cup orange juice
• 2/3 garlic clove, minced
• 3/4 teaspoon ground black pepper (optional)

The Smell is Sweet

The lilacs are almost in full bloom. If you could only smell this picture. On the front lawn we have a white and purple lilac. If any of you Mainers want a plant I have plenty of babies below the bushes. Free for the taking.

After school today we took out the BB guns

And we shot at cans....you might be a red neck if...

Your mother tries to out shoot you and your only 7

I think I was having more fun than him. You should have seen me when I hit a can. We have tried clay pigeons before with shotguns and I didn't hit a one but I can hit a still object. I will probably never shot a deer as they are usually on the move.

We planted corn that we had started. I cannot wait for fresh corn. Earlier today I went to the farmer's market and they had all kinds of goodies. I bought a loaf of Italian bread from an Amish Gent and his daughter, it was the best homemade bread I've ever tasted!

Check out our Cornish X Rocks (broilers), they are 3 weeks old and boy have they grown!

Their feathers are growing in. We kept 25 and sold the rest (175) and we are still getting calls.

Here's the turkeys. We are sold out of them too. We are only keeping 6.

This morning John and I went for a walk out back and naturally I brought my camera. This is a old campsite we discovered on our land last summer. Some teens intermittently occupied it last year but have not returned yet...we are hoping they do not. Because they had an unsafe fire in the pit last year with logs way over the rock borders. It would be devastating if our woods burned. We are assuming these are somebodies parents tools that were left behind.

A makeshift toilet???

And a hammock...The End! Good night ya'll!

The Turkeys have Arrived

We received our shipment of 60 bronze & white broad breasted turkeys this morning. I will take some pictures over the weekend. I am excited they are a heritage breed which I did not know when John first ordered them. We received our typical phone call at 2:46 am from the post office saying they had the birds, we were both so exhausted we slept through the call. John usually jumps right out of bed and heads over right away, especially when the weather was cooler and the excitement of getting chicks was so new to us.
We are looking forward to having a fresh bird for Thanksgiving! (* ok I am wrong they are not heritage...oops, farm mom set me straight - I did a gGoogle search last night and misunderstood, sorry!)

At the library I picked up an arm load of books including Storey's Guide to Raising Poultry which has a lot of good info. Did you know chickens eggs come out the same place as their poop and some of the hens body parts "privates" are called the same as ours....I had no idea!
The other book I borrowed that I am really enjoying is "Just One More Thing Doc" - Further Farmyard Adventures of a Maine Veterinarian by Bradford Brown. I am only on chapter 2 and I find myself reading it with a smirk on my face. I will post more on this later.
Have a good night all!