Early Christmas!!

I’ve been the lucky recipient of not one, but two gifts:

I recently won giveaways from two great fellow bloggers; An exercise DVD from Julie over at Mooberry Farm and an Apron Pattern (sans ruffles) from Mama Pea at A Homegrown Journal .  Well, I’m assuming that the DVD is under all that pretty wrapping……I didn’t have the heart to tear into it just yet!

Thank you Julie & Mama Pea!  Your packages make me smile every time I look at them & I’m sure when I get around to making the Apron or sweating my bum off on the treadmill, I’ll be thinking of you both......or swearing at you both! :)

Last week I hinted about hosting another giveaway of my own, but I’m still waiting for that magic number 100!  When I get to One Hundred Followers on my blog, I’m going to let you all put your name in the virtual hat and I’m going to scientifically draw a number (or in other words, have Rhiannon stuff her sticky hand into a basket or bowl filled with entrant names) for a box of delicious, delectable, mouth-watering, chocolaty delights from Louisa's and Millie's Chocolates!

If you want to tease yourself and see what kind of goodies you could win, click on her link above and peruse their website featuring their Chocolate, Marshmallow, Nougat, Flavored Creams and Caramel goodness.  And try not to lick the screen.  Although if you do, at least wipe it off.

So come on all you lurking around the blog…..click on “Follow” and give everyone, including yourself, a chance to win some CHOCOLATES!!!

Canning Venison

I've never canned meat.  Not even chicken, although I have canned chicken stock.
A friend of ours recently gave us some ground venison and about three pounds of cubed venison.  Made Salsbury steaks out of the ground meat (with gravy, duh) and although I was tempted to slow cook the chunks into a thick chili, I've been meaning to try canning meat.  Since I still had the pressure canner out for making chicken stock (I'll put it away one day), I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to practice.
 
There was enough cubed meat to fill three pint jars.  Not enough to make it really worth firing up the pressure canner, but this was going to be a learning experience.  And if it somehow turned out yucky tasting, I would have only ruined three pints of meat.

I washed the cubed venison and soaked it in water until most of the blood had left the meat, drained it and put it into a pot and just covered the meat with water and a teaspoon of salt.  I quickly brought the pot o' meat up to a boil, then took it off the burner.  Since I was going to do use the Hot Pack method, I just wanted to cook the meat to a rare stage as it will continue cooking in the pressure canner.

I took the chunks of meat out then strained the broth through a seive lined with cheesecloth to get some of the funky looking stuff out.  Packed the hot meat into the clean and hot pint jars, stuck a clove of garlic in each and poured the broth over it up to an inch from the top.

Wiped the rims off, tightened the lids down with the bands and put them into the pressure canner:

My three little jars.

Seventy-five minutes at 11 lbs. of pressure, took the canner off the burner, let the pressure drop to zero and took the jars out to cool (next to my bazillion finished jars of chicken stock):

I'm going to let them sit for a week before I open one and give it a taste test.  If they are yummy, I'll do the same thing when we get venison again, but hopefully there will be enough to pack them into several quart jars (90 minutes at 11 lbs. though).

I've also got a big package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts that I bought and froze earlier this year (yes, from the store...oh, the horror) and they are defrosting in the fridge right now.  A few years ago I bought some canned chicken breasts from the store to put into our pantry for "emergency" use.  Since they were going on two years old, I opened them and made some chicken & dumplings.  They were very, very salty.  I'm going to raw pack the defrosted chicken breasts and omit salt in the jars.  I figure if it needs salt, we'll just grab the salt shaker once it's on our dinner plate.  If I'm going to store canned meat in our pantry, I may as well do it myself.  Probably tastier, and hopefully cheaper than the store-bought stuff.

I'm hoping that my first meat-canning foray will lead to more "convenience" type meals during the winter.  Open a can of chicken, make a quick batch of dumplings or noodles, turn it into chicken pot pie or just dump it in with my homemade chicken stock for a hearty soup.

Winter Preps

Some of you already have a blanket of snow on the ground while others may get through the entire winter without even having to brush snow off your windshield.

We had our first snow yesterday morning.  It started out as rain, then sleet, then finally those big, heavy flakes.  Not much on the ground, and most of the warmer areas like the driveway were cleared by late afternoon.  This morning, anything that was left has turned to a crunchy ice topping on the grass and leaves (and on the porch steps....ask me how I know).

The goats like snow only slightly more than rain.  The younger batch of chickens didn't seem to mind the light covering of snow, but the older biddies were wary of it.  I just imagined the older hens with babushkas around their heads, wrapped in a musty-smelling crocheted shawl and just staring out the chicken door into the snowy yard......

"Oh Harriet, I told you should have made the trip to town for some birdseed and milk yesterday!"

"Do you see those crazy young'ins Imogene?  Get back in the coop before you catch a cold!"

I was a bit worried when I saw the sleet.  With the Ice Storm of 2009 still fresh in my memory, I had anxious feelings of being unprepared for another long-term power outage.  We were without power for thirteen days, but Rhiannon wasn't around yet.

We made it through that storm without many problems as we had a generator (and fuel for it) for keeping the freezers running and the wood stove for heating the house and cooking our meals.  But what we don't have this time around is our wood stove!  It's still sitting on the front porch.  Between the Thanksgiving holiday, family visiting, a bout with a nasty cold and general procrastination, we've yet to get the tile laid for the stove foundation.

Hopefully this snowfall "reminder" will get our butts in gear.  Going to make "The List" for winter this afternoon and check things out.
 
Have you prepped for the winter and any unexpected cold-weather emergencies?

Strange Chicken Treats

It rained ALL day Sunday and late into the night.  Not that I should complain; the weather guys had hinted that it may have been sleet or ice pellets at night.   I didn't have grand plans for doing things outside, but the goats tend to stay inside the barn when it rains (acid rain, you know) and make a mess of everything.  Goodness forbid they should take four steps outside to take a whiz. 

I only milked Ishtar yesterday evening.  Annette was pretty saggy and I figured I may as well start drying her up.  I'll continue milking Ishtar every day, but milk Annette every other day.

I also got their hooves trimmed.  It's much easier to trim when they've been wet for a while.  Oh, and a question for those of you that have both goats (or sheep) and chickens; are my chickens the only ones that go absolutely crazy scrambling to eat the hoof trimmings?  Talk about a major Ick-Factor.  I don't get it.  Maybe it's like some gourmet treat for poultry.

I did manage to clean out one side of the chicken coop this weekend and put down fresh bedding (wasted goat hay), but didn't get the other side cleaned.  Now all my wasted-hay-bedding is soaked so I'll have to wait a few days for it to dry out.  Or maybe the rain will have "cleaned" the hay and the goats will think it's "new & special" hay and want to eat it now.

As if.

Saturday Oven Lovin

Tiny Gardener had a most excellent idea for a Saturday blog post: Oven Lovin!

Not only does this give the participating bloggers a reprieve from having to make stuff up write a somewhat intelligent or informative post on Saturday, but it gives us a chance to swap recipes!

I didn't have to put a lot of thought into what I was going to submit for my recipe as I had these on the countertop staring at me for the last few days:

So for my first Oven Lovin recipe, I present to you my Banana Oatmeal Bread:

1 ¼ Cup Whole Wheat Flour
1 Cup Oatmeal
1 tsp. Baking Soda
½ tsp. EACH Cinnamon & Salt
1 Cup Sugar
2 Eggs
½ Cup Vegetable Oil
1 tsp. Vanilla
2 Ripe Bananas
¾ Cup Sunflower Seeds

Combine the flour, oatmeal, soda, salt & cinnamon together in a bowl & set aside.  Cream together the sugar, eggs, oil & vanilla then add the bananas & mix until kind’a smooth.  Gradually add the flour / oatmeal and then add the sunflower seeds.  Pour batter into a greased & lightly floured pan and bake in a 375 degree oven for 60 minutes or more (check using a toothpick after an hour).

This was a make-shift recipe when I had a LOT of oatmeal in the house and NOT a lot of walnuts around.  So I figured I may as use the oatmeal in place of some of the flour and use what nuts I DID have around; sunflower seeds.  Seeds, nuts, whatever.  Ever since I used the sunflower seeds in the banana bread, I haven’t gone back to the walnuts. 

Enjoy!

Nothin' but Time

I feel like my barn chores are soooo much easier lately.  The Cornish have been put in the freezer so I no longer have to worry about feeding / watering them or moving their pen.  The garden no longer needs watering or weeding.  And now I’m milking in the evenings instead of the morning.

For the past few weeks, I have been upping the milking time by a half-hour each day.  There are several reasons I’ve been doing so (and not just because I’m not a morning person!);

Rhiannon has been pretty insistent that she attend the morning milkings and barn chores.  But it’s just too cold early in the morning and I don’t want her freezing her little bum off.

I’m going to have to dry them up pretty soon and I figured that once they are used to evening milkings, I’ll go to every-other-day evening milkings and then stop altogether.

And I don’t like freezing cold early mornings much myself. 

The evening milkings seem to be much more laid back.  I’m not running around trying to let the chickens out, feed the chickens, water the goats/chickens, milk the goats, yell at Rhiannon to stop chasing the rooster, run the milk into the house to strain it, then get some breakfast into Rhiannon’s maw before she throws a fit. 

I just milk the goats & yell at Rhiannon to stop harassing the livestock.

Now that I’ve got all this “extra” time on my hands, I’ll use it for other things.  Like chipping ice out of the water buckets and hauling warm water to the critters (had to do that on Wednesday morning.  Boooo!).

Oh well.  It’s not like I’d do anything really constructive with the extra fifteen minutes other than browse the blogosphere.

Don't forget to check out all the Giveaways!  Mama Pea just added one today; click HERE to see them all.

Giveaways!

Louisa's Country Closet is giving away some cute collars and toys just in time for Christmas!  Click HERE to enter!

Don't forget Julie over at Mooberry Farm; she's giving away one of her favorite exercise DVD's!
Click HERE to enter! 

And Sarah Jean at BeeWench Farm is giving away some homemade soap and udder blam!  Click HERE to enter!

This just in: Another Apron Pattern Giveaway; this time from Mama Pea! 
Click HERE to enter!


The Spirit of Giving is in the air!  And just to tease you all, I'm planning on giving away a box of chocolates from Louisa's and Millie's Chocolates very soon.  If you want it to be even sooner, you'll have to sucker some of your friends into becomming followers because I'm going to do the giveaway when I get to One Hundred Followers!

(Wow, that's a lot of exclamation points in one blog post!)