Know Thy Food

Following the recipe of my friend Cassandra, I made roasted chicken today for Zoe and my mom since they both love chicken! This is one of the birds we got from Deo Volente Farm. Ingredients 1 whole chicken, rinsed, gutted, cleaned 3 potatoes, quartered 3 small sweet onions, quartered cloves from 1 head of garlic, peeled rosemary salt, pepper, paprika butter Directions Use butter to rub the...

I tried to hold off on picking them, so I could share the joy of ripe figs right off the tree with my mom who loves figs and is coming to visit soon, but alas, the figs had their own schedule and ripened already. I picked a big bowl today and made a 6 pint batch of low sugar jam that I am not sure will set right even though I did add pectin. We shall see, I guess. I also made 3 pints of walnut...

Our friend Ellen gave us one of her 10 week old hens- a pretty Silver Laced Wyandotte named Persephone. I was a bit worried about introducing her to our flock of (now just 4) 20 week old, fully grown girls, but so far, all is well. When we brought her home yesterday evening, the other hens were already roosting in the coop. I let Persephone walk around the yard alone for a bit. She was definitely...

Well, we had a death among our hennies. One of our Rhode Island Reds was acting a bit weird yesterday. She didn't come to me with the others when I called them to put them away for the night, and first we thought she had jumped the fence... but when we searched for her Dan found her under the hedge in the driveway, just laying there really still. Dan picked her up and put her in the run, and she...

Gardening is hard work- emotionally, more so than physically, for me at least. You invest so much energy and time and love, getting these little seeds to sprout and grow... and then the heat comes and your lettuce and broccoli and chard bolts practically overnight, becoming bitter and inedible. You nurture your onions- water, weed, and add lovingly add compost... and then your chickens decide to...

I am not sure if our food bill is going down or not... I am obviously not buying a lot of grains, legumes, or nuts anymore because we are still stocked up, but I seem to find other little extras to splurge on all the time. Last month it was ice cream, this month it's Kettle chips and coconut juice that cost me about $50 unnecessarily... Azure Standard Sweet Cream Butter, Salted 5 x 1 lb. $12.35...

Today I found 7, yes seven!!! eggs. Three of them were in the driveway, where I found one egg yesterday as well, and 4 of them were in the nests. I'm assuming the ones in the driveway were at least partially laid yesterday since there is no way (is there??) that 5 hens can lay 7 eggs in one day... Speaking of, I'm not sure why our girls like the driveway so much- it's just a bunch of...