wORKING WITH THE LAND
LOVING EVERY MINUTE OF IT… er… ALMOST EVERY MINUTE
Thank you for stopping by! I hope you enjoy the stories of our adventure. Feel free to have a look around. We are exploring a number of farm-business opportunities, so please let us know if you are interested in any of them. For now, we are proud to offer you pork. You can pre-order a half or whole hog. Just fill out the form, and we will contact you with further details!
Formaggio Success!
It has been over four months, and I decided it was time to give it a shot. If you haven't read the earlier post(s), back in early March, I made a parmesan cheese wheel from goat milk. I have been anxiously waiting for enough time to pass to try this first wheel, and hopefully give me confidence for the rest of the wheels in the refrigerator, and encourage me to explore further. I really want to make a swiss and a blue cheese. I thought it smelled incredible. However, there is clearly something I need to learn, or some tools that I need to find and learn to use... it is next to impossible to cut the wheel into wedges. Ultimately, we have to score the wheel, and then work [...]
The Battle Has Begun
If you saw the above picture before, you may have read about Laverne introducing her kids (Ivanka & Barron) to roosting on the antlers of the European mount above the french doors that go to the kitchen. Now let your imagination fly like our rooster Donald escaping from our newest rooster that is twice his size. When it was just Laverne, the rug outside the doors would rapidly generate a stalagmite of poultry fecal material. Adding Ivanka and Barron resulted in a mountain that grew nightly like a volcanic island rising from the sea floor. Tiffany had enough of that. She hauled a ladder out there, and put a towel over the antlers. That would surely dissuade their roosting. Barron politely accepted this sign of being unwelcome. He didn't go [...]
Kunckle O’ Pork
Should you choose to make the very wise decision to request some spectacular Rock N Feather Acres pork, I strongly encourage you to explore all the meat options available in the cut sheet (Cut Sheet). Back to the story, I recently made one of my favorite "other things" you can make from pork. It is a German dish called Schweinshaxe... Pork Knuckle. In your order, this will be the hocks. Unfortunately, Zimmermans skins the hog before it goes in for processing, so the hocks don't have skin. I am working on a solution for that, but I am not there, yet. You can find your own recipe on-line for making it the way you like. The pork rub is very important, but the slow roasting is as equally important. In [...]
Chicken Nuggets
In the picture above, one can see Laverne in essentially her favorite roosting spot. Well, that is her favorite roosting spot unless she is broody, and then virtually nothing will get her out of a nest box. When she does come out of her brood box. When she leaves the box, everything has to be done in a hurry and she is clearly clucking about being late for a very important date like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. As wonderful as it was to watch her raise her chicks (which rather quickly grew larger than her), there were some unexpected developments. Laverne was confused about where to roost once she had her chicks. She started out going to the coop, but then felt the call of the porch. [...]
Good Research
Just a quick note. If you have never been around hogs, but have played Angry Birds, the hog noises are spot on... I get to listen to it every day they are here. Cracks me up...
Spring Sprung Early!
This might be my favorite time of year. Yeah, I will probably feel similarly in about six months. The trees will just look different. I keep stressing myself because I feel like the garden should be all planted. My tomato plants in the garage look puny. Why aren't they ready NOW! On that front, I have to try to accept God's grace. The fact is we normally would get a surprise freeze between right now and Mother's Day. I have moved the four porch plants out of the garage and to the... er... porch, but I think every spring for the last five years I have had to cover them with blankets before Mother's Day. In the past three weeks we have had only one night when it dropped to [...]
All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. – Proverbs 14:23