Updates on this-n-that

In case you're wondering whatever happened ...

Katherine's wrist
The doctor said she has a tiny cyst in her wrist, so tiny and so buried that they probably couldn't find it to remove it, so she will just have to live with it. Occupational therapy starts tomorrow. Katherine was actually hoping for something more dramatic that could be fixed by surgery. Being told that hand therapy is her only option was upsetting. She told me that she doesn't complain about it much anymore because it just hurts all the time, so she's learned to not use her left hand and just live with it.

Fencing
We have so many fencing projects around here, I don't think there's any chance we'll be done before the ground freezes. I thought Mike had treated some more posts, but he hasn't. He only managed to get them cut from downed trees that he found across the creek. Tomorrow is Veteran's Day here in the U.S., which means no school for him, so he's hoping to get the posts painted with the waterproofing stuff, so that he can get them in the ground this weekend around the pond. Once we get that area fenced in, we are hoping it will reduce our poultry losses to coyotes.

The fence in the far pasture is still wrapped in wool. The llamas seem to be doing a good job guarding those pastures now, so that fence is not a top priority.

Naughty turkeys
The turkeys that flew up into the tree Thursday night don't seem to know what to do with themselves now that most of their friends are gone. They used to stick pretty close to their house when the whole flock of 20 was there, but now that there are only three, we are finding them all over the place. A couple of them are exceptional flyers. They were in the front yard when I got home from teaching this afternoon, and I sent Jonathan out there to chase them back to their pasture. They flew about 200 feet, looking like pterodactyls. Their wing span is four or five feet.

What's on the menu?
We're eating a lot of turkey and chicken now. Last night we had a roasted turkey breast, goat milk gravy, homemade rolls, baked potatoes, green beans, and apple crisp. All of it was homegrown, except the potatoes. We also had an Illinois wine to go with it, so although we didn't make the wine, it was local. We planted eight grape vines last year, and only three made it to this year. I hope they come back next year, but we should probably plant a few more. I don't know if three vines will produce enough grapes for us.

The turkey breast came from a 20# bird, so it was huge. Tonight I'll be making a Mexican casserole with some of it, and tomorrow will probably be turkey tetrazzini. The Mexican casserole is a great way to use up the tortilla chip crumbs that are in the bottom of every bag.

Mexican turkey casserole

1 chopped onion
1 T. oil
1 pound of peeled tomatoes (16 ounce can, if you don't have frozen)
1/2 cup canned banana peppers (a 4 ounce can of chilies works if you don't have banana peppers)
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
enough crushed tortilla chips to cover the bottom of the pan
1 c. broth (I use vegetable broth, but if you have turkey broth, that works also)
3 cups of cubed turkey meat
8 ounces of shredded cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 2-quart baking dish.
Saute onion in oil for about five minutes or until tender. Add chopped tomatoes with juice, tomato sauce, and peppers.
Crush enough tortilla chips to cover the bottom of your baking pan, and pour broth over them. Spread chopped up turkey over the chips. Sprinkle cheese on top of the turkey, and pour the onions and tomatoes over the cheese. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Garnish with sour cream, taco sauce, and/or green onions (my favorite).

Rambunctious

I went out to the sheep pasture while my potatoes were baking for lunch, because I wanted to see if I could spot any testicles on the young rams. I'll spare you the suspense and tell you that I don't see anything, so I'm hopeful that the Burdizzo method of castration worked! These are two of the little guys who were castrated. I'm really excited to have another gray wether. I love gray wool, and it sells very well. We originally said we were going to butcher the three wethers, but their colors are turning out so beautiful, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to follow through with that plan.

Here's a picture of the third wether in front of the ram that is currently living with the ewes -- and checking out a ewe when I snapped this picture. He was just born this spring. Isn't it amazing how fast they grow! He's only about five months older than the little guy!

The adult rams that are not with the ewes are letting it be known that they are not happy about the living arrangements. They have messed up the livestock panels between their pen and the other pen, so I went into their pen and tried to fix it. I finally gave up on one section and decided to let Mike do it when he gets home from delivering turkeys. The whole time I was working on the livestock panels, the four rams just stood there and watched me quietly, but as soon as I got up and headed for the gate, Teddy started running towards me with his head down. Yes, sweet Teddy -- the ram whose life I saved after he was attacked by coyotes this summer.

This was the first time I've ever found myself on the same side of the fence with a ram in a bad mood, and I hope it's the last! My left thumb and my right wrist do not feel good. I put my hands down in front of my knees to ... to protect myself, I guess. It's amazing how your brain just does not work very well in some situations. Finally, I got behind a tree, which confused Teddy. He then walked up to the tree and looked around it at me. He put his head down and started to run towards me again, so I moved again to put the tree between us. I looked at how far it was to the gate and knew I'd never get there without being rammed several more times, so I went over the fence. Thank goodness it's only woven wire over there. I'm not sure if I'd have made the same decision with electric.

This is Margaret's little brown ewe lamb out of Ophelia, and it didn't seem fair to take pictures of the boys without also taking her picture. Isn't she just adorable!

The softest hands and the tastiest baked potato

Today for lunch I had a baked potato and pampered my hands at the same time. How? First, scrub the potato under running water and set it aside. Then pour a small amount of oil in your hand and about a teaspoon of salt. Rub your hands together and get the oil and salt all over your palms, tops of your hands, and between your fingers. Then pick up the potato and rub the oil and salt all over it. If you are making multiple potatoes, you might want a friend nearby to pour more oil and salt into your hands as needed. Place the oiled and salted potatoes in a baking dish and wash your hands. If they still feel a little oily, use a paper towel to dry them, and within a couple of minutes, your skin will absorb whatever oil is left. Congratulations! You've just had a salt scrub treatment on your hands for free!

There is no need to cover the potatoes while they're baking, and you wind up with a crunchy, salty skin -- like fried potato skins without all the fat from soaking in oil. Yum!

Turkey trouble

A 10.85 pound heritage turkey on the left and a 34.78 pound broad-breasted bronze turkey on the right -- You can see how the breast bone on the heritage turkey sticks out in the middle of the turkey's chest, whereas the broad-breasted turkey has so much breast meat, there is an indentation in the middle of the turkey's chest. We'll be grinding up the meat on the big one and using it to make sausage, burgers, and chili.

Raising turkeys on a small scale is quite a challenge. Most years we take reservations until all but two turkeys are reserved. But since we've had trouble in recent years with not having enough big turkeys, this year I decided to have reservations only in March, and I said that we would keep whatever was left for ourselves. I doubled the number of reservations, and ordered the turkey poults in May because our turkeys had not provided us with poults by then. First mistake -- I should have known that the odds of having poults by April or May were ridiculously low. I think I've written on here in past years that it is almost impossible to have decent-sized Thanksgiving turkeys that were incubated, hatched, and raised in Illinois. The hens don't start laying early enough for it to happen. Our own home-hatched turkeys this year hatched in July, and right now, they're probably about six or seven pounds each.

Then there is the issue of ordering the poults at just the right time. Order them too soon, and the boys will reach sexual maturity and start trying to kill each other before Thanksgiving. Order too late, and they just don't get very big. Order too early, and more will die from hypothermia en route from the hatchery. But if they don't get big enough by Thanksgiving, people aren't happy. But those are the typical issues we deal with every year -- and it's enough for me to say almost every year that I'm never selling turkeys again.

This year, something new happened. Mike and I were both teaching Thursday afternoon and evening, so our teenage children had to catch the turkeys and put them in the pick-up for the drive to the processor Friday morning. Unfortunately, they arrived home after dark, so several turkeys had already decided to roost in the trees. Since Mike had to leave before dawn, there was no chance they would come down before he left. When the kids tried to get them down, they just went up higher. That means several turkeys did not get processed. Of course, only heritage turkeys can fly, so it was heritage turkeys that went up into the tree. So, we didn't have enough heritage turkeys for our customers, and the ones we did have were smaller than normal. I couldn't believe those big Spanish blacks were only 12 pounds!

I was ready to throw in the towel last night for good! I didn't want to deal with unhappy customers. I sent emails to everyone explaining the situation, and asking if people could take smaller turkeys or broad-breasted turkeys. One person responded immediately (a new customer) with a short response that merely said to cancel her reservation. I went to bed thinking that today was going to be terrible. However, when I started calling people, most of them laughed when I told them about the turkeys flying up into the tree, and they were happy to revise their orders. So, maybe I'll do this again next year.

Naughty goats, good goats; lucky turkeys, unlucky turkeys

This morning I looked out the window and saw an unusually large number of dark-colored turkeys in the middle pasture. Then I realized it was wild turkeys! It usually surprises people to hear that wild turkeys almost never come to visit our turkeys. In fact, this is only the second time in six years that I've seen wild turkeys near our birds. Since I went running out there to get a picture of the wild turkeys, I thought it was only fair that I take pictures of our turkeys, especially since they will be going to the processor tomorrow.

Most of our larger heritage turkeys this year are Spanish blacks. The largest heritage turkey we ever raised was a Spanish black five years ago, and it dressed out at 18 pounds. It's very hard to judge turkey weights because of their feathers, but I'm thinking one of these boys just might weigh that much this year. They sure do seem big! Tomorrow Mike will be taking the turkeys down to Arthur for processing, and I am taking Katherine to the doctor to get the results for her MRI. (I'm thinking it's bad news since they won't tell us over the phone.) I'm a little jealous that Mike will be going to Arthur. Although I don't like getting up at 3 a.m., I do love shopping at the Amish stores -- not the tourist spots, but the stores where the Amish shop. Since they cook at home most of the time, they have the best kitchen equipment for great prices!

This year, we ordered "hatchery's choice" of breeds, so we wound up with a little bit of everything, including broad-breasted turkeys. This is a broad-breasted hen in the front with a gobbler behind her. I love the iridescence of their feathers. I wish I could capture it with my camera, but it just does not come out as beautiful as it is in real life.

We have raised broad-breasted bronze for the past four years for people who wanted large turkeys that were free-range and drug-free, but this is the first time we've ever had broad-breasted whites. This is one big boy, and I'm wondering what he'll weigh! I've already decided his breast meat will be our ground turkey and turkey sausage for this year. He will simply be too big to roast. I'm guessing 36 pounds with about 20 pounds of breast meat. I'll let you know how close I got!

When I was outside, I noticed the naughty goats had gone through the electric fence. I know they think the grass is greener on the other side, but it really is NOT. In fact, there is less grass on the other side! But I suppose they think it's all a conspiracy -- "The humans are trying to keep the best grass from us!"

Luckily, my two finished champions are staying in the pasture where they're safe ... at least for today. Those are the top three strands of six strands of electric, which are about nine inches apart.

And finally, here's my 2-year-old lavender gobbler. He's the proud papa of the eight young turkeys that were hatched on the farm. Two other mama turkeys would have hatched eggs, except the coyotes got them. This past weekend, Mike cut up logs and painted them with waterproofing stuff, so he can get them in the ground as fence posts this next weekend, and hopefully next year, all of the mama turkeys will be able to hatch babies!

Pintos: my favorite beans

I grew up about three hours from the Mexican border in S. Texas. We had a couple sit-down restaurants that served the usual meat and potatoes fare, a Mexican restaurant, a couple of hamburger places, and a little fast-food Mexican place. At home, dinner was usually steak, ground beef, or beans, specifically pinto beans. I don't think I even knew other types of dry beans existed until I was a teenager. So, it should come as no surprise that I love pintos.

Pinto beans are the typical bean used in refried beans in Mexican dishes like burritos, nachos, and tostadas (called chalupas where I grew up). Typically, cooked pintos are mashed and fried in lard for traditional refried beans, but since I've become health conscious in my adulthood, I've just been mashing and reheating the pintos in a skillet, adding water if necessary to keep them from sticking as they're heated.

If you're in a hurry, you can buy refried beans in cans, and at less than a dollar a can, they're not a bad deal. However, if you cook beans from scratch, you can make a lot more beans for the same amount of money. To save time, money, and propane, I cook up large amounts of pintos at one time, since three or four pounds of beans will cook in the same amount of time as one pound. Here's what I do ...

Get three or four pounds of pinto, whatever will fill your largest pot about 1/3 full. Sort through the beans to pick out any dirt clods or small stones that may have been missed by the processing equipment, then rinse the beans in a colander under warm running water. Put them in the pot and fill the pot with water until it is about 2/3 full. The beans will double in size as they soak. If you can soak them overnight, you can use tap water, but if you need the beans today, you can turn on the stove and heat the water. As soon as it boils, turn it off, and cover the pot. They'll be ready to cook in a few hours. I'd wait at least two hours for the hot soak, but if you have more time before dinner, don't worry, they'll be fine. The longer the soak, the quicker they'll cook, so soaking will save you money in electricity or gas. When I soak beans overnight in cold water and turn on the heat in the morning, they're done within 90 minutes to two hours. If you wake up in the morning and decide you want pinto beans today, it's cheaper to plan the for dinner, although with a hot soak, you could have them done in time for lunch.

Some people say you should dump the soaking water -- they claim you are less likely to have gas if you do that. I've tried dumping the soaking water or not, and I haven't noticed a difference, but then most of my family members don't get gas from beans, so I don't know what I was expecting to see by even trying the "dump the soaking water" method. If you have gas problems, dump the soaking water and let us know if it helped.

When it's time to cook the beans, they have doubled in size, so the pot is getting pretty full at this point, and I fill it up with water, coming to within an inch or two of the top. If you soaked the beans overnight, you don't need as much water, because the beans have already absorbed so much. Don't get wrapped up in being perfect. Beans are very forgiving. If the water level falls below the top of the beans, add another cup or two until the beans are submerged. As long as the beans are covered with water, they'll cook just fine. Cook them on your smallest burner on low, or you could have a mess if the beans boils over.

Once my big pot of beans is cooked, I generally put about four cups in my skillet and mash them for whatever dinner I was planning. Often we have a Mexican buffet dinner, which includes:

• Burritos -- soft flour tortillas, shredded cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, jalapenos.
• Tostadas -- fried corn tortillas, and all the same ingredients as for the burritos. The chalupas I grew up with had beans spread on the tortilla, then cheese sprinkled on top and melted under a broiler. The chilled vegetables were placed on top of the cheese when it came out of the oven.
• Nachos -- fried corn tortilla wedges, shredded cheddar cheese, and jalapenos. Real nachos look like lovely little canape-style appetizers with the refried beans nicely spread across each tortilla wedge, cheese sprinkled on top, then melted. A jalapeno slice tops each one.

If your local supermarket doesn't sell "tostada shells," you can make your own. In fact, it's usually cheaper to make your own anyway. Buy soft corn tortillas, put about an inch of oil in a skillet, and when it's hot enough, place a tortilla in the oil and leave it there until it's hard. If the bottom is browning faster than the top, use tongs to turn it over. When you tap the tortilla with the tongs, it should make a loud "tick" as it would if you hit something solid with the tongs, meaning it's done. Remove it from the oil with the tongs and place it on a paper towel to drain.

So, what do you do with all those beans that are left in the pot after you've had your Mexican buffet? Freeze them! We normally have five people for dinner, so we freeze four cups at a time using either freezer containers or freezer bags. Aside from the fact that freezer bags are disposable, so not very environmentally friendly, I do prefer them because when I'm in a hurry, I can pull a bag out of the freezer, stick it in the microwave for about two minutes, and the beans are soft enough that I can break the block into several pieces and drop them into the skillet. Add about a cup of water and once the beans start melting, you can start mashing with your potato masher. In less than 15 minutes, including the time it takes to chop vegetables and shred cheese, you can have another Mexican buffet ready to feed your family.

Mexican pizza is another favorite with refried beans. Spread the beans on raw pizza dough, sprinkle with cheddar cheese and cook in the oven as you would any other type of pizza. When it's done, you can sprinkle with shredded lettuce, tomatoes, jalapenos, and taco sauce. I recently had an amazing revelation -- why do we put cheddar cheese on Mexican food when it's from England? Since I make queso blanco, which is a Mexican cheese, I decided to put it on the last Mexican pizza we made, and it was delicious! If you have any tortilla chip crumbs in your pantry, you can sprinkle them on top of the pizza to add a little crunch.

For more money-saving tips, visit Frugal Friday over at Life as Mom.

Turkey attacked

Although I didn't buy the llamas to protect our poultry, we haven't lost any turkeys this year since the llamas are living in the pasture that surrounds the turkey house. And we know the coyotes are still here, since we had a turkey hen get attacked on Friday afternoon. The coyote obviously grabbed her in his mouth since her skin is ripped up on her right thigh and the left side of her back, and we can even see where it happened because feathers are scattered across the grass next to the goat pasture. As with the attack on Teddy the ram, I'm assuming the llamas didn't know the coyote was in the pasture until the hen was attacked, then they ran over and scared him off.

The turkey hen is so injured, unfortunately, we need to butcher her. She is one of this year's Thanksgiving turkeys that would be going to the processor on Friday, but it doesn't seem humane to let her suffer. Although she ran from us when we first found her, since we put her in the turkey house, she hasn't left. In fact, she hasn't even moved from the spot where we sat her down on the ground. And turkeys are not nice to one of their own that's injured.

I'm afraid we are going to be losing more goats, because they started going through the electric fence like it's not even hot, even though the fence tester says it is hot. Thursday as I was about to leave, I saw goats behind the chicken house, and I knew there wasn't anything I could do about it. I hate the feeling of helplessness. It started with four goats three years ago, and now they've convinced about 3/4 of the herd to follow them to greener pastures. You know, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. They get alfalfa hay morning and night, and there is still plenty of green grass where they are, but they think there is better food to be found closer to the creek. I can't put them in the inner barn pasture, because that borders the buck pens, and when they were in there a couple weeks ago, one of the bucks jumped the fence. I don't know if anyone was in heat, but I've marked the calendar, so if someone kids in five months, I will know which one is Daddy.

I have some fencing ideas, but that takes time and money, and it's not something that's going to happen very quickly. This weekend, Mike is working on the fencing around the pond so the chickens, geese, and ducks will be safe.

New barn residents

On Friday, I went to the neighbor's to castrate a goat that someone gave them, and I came home with two kittens. They are living in a room (with a television, heater, and upholstered chair) in one of our barns until they get used to the place. I wish they'd stay in the barns all the time. That's where we need them to eat the mice, and they'd be safe in there. But since cats are independent little critters, they'll go wherever they want. The blue striped one is a boy, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to call him Bogie, short for Humphrey Bogart.

The other one is a girl. She's a calico, and I've heard they only come in female. I had forgotten that little fact as I picked her up and started to cuddle her. Then I looked under her tail. I tried not to like her, but she is just so cute! She is also a vicious little thing! When I brought in Sneakers, the resident barn cat, she attacked him! He completely ignored her. I can't decide what to name her ... Ingrid Bergman and Lauren Bacall both starred with Bogart in movies. Margaret thinks we should name her Audrey Hepburn, but she never starred in any movies with Bogart. Any ideas?

Keeping up with corporate America

When people ask why we moved out here in 2002, I say that we wanted to grow our own food, because we prefer eating organic. Often, someone will respond that there is a lot more organic food available in the stores than there used to be, and I'll agree. There was a time, a couple years ago, when I wondered if we would have made the move more recently. It seems possible when you look on grocery store shelves that one could live in suburbia and eat mostly organic foods, including humanely raised meats. But once I started doing a little research, I realized that things have not changed that much.

Once corporate America realized there were big bucks to be made on conscientious consumers, they started marketing to those consumers ... and as they say in marketing, "The truth is irrelevant -- what's important is what people think!" It doesn't really matter if your products are organic or humanely raised, as long as people believe it and buy your product. The latest corporation to fall prey to this is Niman meats. For years, that label meant humanely raised, but apparently after Bill Niman became a corporation, his board of directors saw only $$$ and didn't really care about the lives of the cattle and pigs before they became meat. I find this sad because I'm sure that most Niman customers don't know that the company has changed leadership and philosophy. How is a conscientious consumer supposed to keep up? The New York Times recently did a story on Niman's new adventure.

He is once again a sole proprietor -- this time raising goats for meat! And I'm happy to say that he has seen the light and is raising his goats on grass. The one thing I never liked about Niman meats is that they were grain finished, although I applauded every other aspect of their business. His new meat is available under the label "BN Ranch" because he is not allowed to use his own name -- Niman -- to sell his products since leaving the company that he started in the 70s.

When I was growing up in a small town in Texas, my parents would buy meat from local ranchers. My dad would go out there, shoot the calf or the pig, and bring it home to butcher in our garage. Of course, I was completely insensed by this and complained, "Why can't we just buy our meat at the store like normal people?" And my mother replied, "Because you don't know how it was raised." I always wondered what in the world that meant -- who cares how they're raised? But as a young mother myself in 1988, I read an article about factory-raised chickens and became a vegetarian, a diet that my entire family would follow for 14 years before we moved out here. So, even though there is a lot more so-called organic and humanely-raised food available in the supermarket today, I'm glad we live out here. I know exactly what our animals eat, how they live, and how they die. More than ever, I won't touch commercially-grown meats, regardless of what the label says, because as my mama used to say, "You don't know how it was raised."

Bean basics

I grew up in Texas and ate lots of beans, so I knew how to cook beans like some kids know how to make a bowl of oatmeal. If you know how to cook beans, they are just as easy (cheap and healthy, too) as a bowl of oatmeal. Here are a few important things everyone should know about cooking beans:

1. Harder water makes for a longer cooking time for beans. (I always know when our water softener has run out of salt because my beans don't cook!)
2. Do NOT put salt in any beans until they are done, because salt slows down the cooking time horribly -- they will eventually cook, but it will take hours and hours.
3. Do NOT add tomatoes to beans until they are done cooking -- same reason. The acid in the tomatoes will slow down the cooking.
   
4. You should pour your dry beans on the table and pick through them to make sure there are no small stones or dirt clods before washing them in a colander and then cooking them.
5. All beans should be soaked at least a few hours in hot water or overnight in cold water to make them cook faster -- except split peas and lentils, which cook fine without pre-soaking. You can usually get away without pre-soaking if you're using a crock pot and will be cooking them all day.